South Carolina Bounced In SEC Tournament By Ole Miss

Despite their collective efforts, South Carolina's basketball team dropped their first round SEC Tournament matchup against Ole Miss, losing 67-61.

Christian Dart | Mar 9, 2023

South Carolina Bounced In SEC Tournament By Ole Miss /

Lamont Paris' squad came into Wednesday looking to do some damage in the SEC Tournament. Ranked as the 12th seed, South Carolina opened up the SEC tournament against the 13th seed Ole Miss Rebels, hoping to advance to the second round and be able to face off against the Tennessee Volunteers.

Due to both teams having split their regular season series and finishing with the same regular season record, things looked pretty even between the two squads, making it no surprise that the game was such a close contest. The two teams started the game playing sloppy, having turned over the ball multiple times within the first few minutes. Though both squads quickly cleaned up their play, and engaged in a back-and-forth battle that ran the course of the game.

The Gamecocks' scoring efforts were initially led by Meechie Johnson and Hayden Brown, who scored 11 and 13 points in the game, respectively. Brown was very active on the glass at the beginning of the game and greatly impacted both sides of the court. After a hard-fought first half, the Gamecocks went into the locker room trailing Ole Miss by just one point.

Ole Miss started the second half-hot and jumped out to a bit of lead, but South Carolina quickly caught up and reclaimed their first lead since the beginning of the second half from a GG Jackson layup, who led the Gamecocks in scoring with 24 points. With just a few minutes left in the game, the Rebels pulled away again and led by a few possessions, painting a bleak picture for the Gamecocks. GG Jackson, however, wound up single-handedly bring South Carolina back into the fold, scoring seven straight points which brought the Gamecocks within one possession with just a minute left. In a crucial possession, with South Carolina only down three points, Ole Miss Guard Matthew Murrell missed a jump shot, but the Rebels grabbed the offensive rebound and eventually made a tough baseline jumper with just seconds left on the shot clock, securing the win the Ole Miss.

It's a disappointing finish for Lamont Paris and South Carolina's Basketball team, a team that held the lead with ten minutes left in the game, and despite showing signs of growth compared to the beginning of the season, was unable to seal the deal late in the contest.