COLUMBIA – South Carolina couldn’t enter the lane and Tennessee barely left it.
The Gamecocks’ two-game winning streak and the hope of two straight wins over AP Top-25 teams were rudely snatched away by the Volunteers on Saturday, 70-63. Tennessee (13-5, 4-3 SEC) had hands in every passing lane, a body for every driver and clogged the paint so efficiently that Chris Silva spent more time outside of it than in it.
USC (12-7, 3-4) never went away, always finding just enough shots to stay close. But the Gamecocks never could get the big hoop to take the lead or sustain any kind of offensive momentum. Tennessee was too big, too fast, too strong.
And USC, having won two straight despite its shooting, was finally burned by the fire it had been playing with.
“Gotta score, man. Early in the game, we got three or four point-blank, right there,” USC coach Frank Martin said. “You play a team like Tennessee, you better make those or it’s going to bite you. And it did.”
The Gamecocks shot 36.7 percent from the field. While Justin Minaya hit a career-high four 3-pointers on his way to 16 points, his best showing in an SEC game thus far, he received scarce help. Wes Myers got hot with 16 points on the strength of three 3s, but only Frank Booker joined them in double figures.
Silva, the anchor of USC’s team, scored six points with one field goal. Maik Kotsar had eight. Tennessee scored 32 points in the paint; USC had half that.
The Gamecocks beat Georgia and Kentucky by making their free throws. USC missed 10 Saturday, two that could have tied the game with 2:30 to go.
Silva was the culprit there. Hassani Gravett’s layup that could have put USC up two earlier hit nothing but glass. That became a 5-0 Volunteers run, the game-clincher as it turned out.
Yet everybody else contributed. The Gamecocks haven’t been a great scoring team all year. When their defense collapsed, the result was predictable.
“Today we couldn’t guard Lamonte Turner off the bounce,” Martin said of the Vols’ 25-point scorer. “We tried everything. Just couldn’t keep him in front.”
Kotsar’s baby hook in the paint tied the game at 57 with 6:30 to go, but Silva picked up his fourth foul on Turner’s drive into the paint. Turner’s two free throws restored the Tennessee lead, but Gravett re-tied it with his own two shots from the line.
But Gravett’s careening drive into the paint netted an airballed layup and a Tennessee rebound. Turner stuck a jumper over Gravett on the other end.
Gravett turned it over again and Admiral Schofield buried a 3-pointer. But after Myers made a 3 and UT missed, Silva went to the line to tie the game.
He missed both.
“We got freshman-year Chris in practice yesterday, we got freshman-year Chris in the game today,” Martin said. “Completely disconnected from what we were doing. It’s a shame, because he’s worked real hard and been real good for us this year.”
“We just tell him to keep his head up,” Minaya said. “He’s been a good free-throw shooter all year. If he keeps his head up, he’ll be all right.”
The Gamecocks are at Florida on Wednesday.