One Reason Why Gamecock MBB Fans Should & Shouldn't Be Concerned About Loss To Alabama
On Tuesday night, Lamont Paris and the South Carolina Gamecocks took on the Alabama Crimson Tide, and for at least the first 20 minutes of the game, seemed to dictate the flow of the game with the exception of Mark Sears hot hand shooting the basketball. By the end of the night, however, the team walked away, having suffered a 72-47 beatdown, their worst loss in nearly ten and a half months.
After the game, some polarizing opinions were espoused by Gamecock fans on social media, with some calling for calm while others were in near-total shock regarding how much the game turned sideways. With it being almost 42 hours since the game's conclusion, I wanted to analyze both sides of the aforementioned discussion: is there reason to be alarmed after the Gamecocks' blowout loss to the Crimson Tide?
Reason Fans Shouldn't Be Concerned
We'll start by talking about how the 'optimists' best compartmentalized Tuesday night's loss: it was simply a night where things didn't go the Gamecocks way. Sometimes, in basketball, you can have a game where, even though you make the right decisions and the right plays, the results don't match your in-play execution.
Take Meechie Johnson, for example. The fourth-year junior from Ohio shot 2 of 9 from behind the three-point line. You read that correctly: 2 of 9, despite entering the game having shot 36 percent from that range. There aren't many games where the Gamecocks' star guard will be this off shooting the basketball.
On the other end, Alabama's Mark Sears quite literally couldn't miss, shooting 10 of 13 from the floor and 6 of 8 from behind the arc, and that included plenty of occasions where a South Carolina defender was right in his grill. It didn't matter. Although Sears could be named an All-American by season's end, this was statistically an outlier performance by the senior guard. When you combine that with an off-shooting night from your star player, you can see how a game can turn out like Tuesday night's did.
Reason Fans Should Be Concerned
There was one component of this game that, if I were a Gamecock fan, would greatly concern me: the lack of aggression displayed by several players on the offensive end of the floor. I'm not going to name names because these are collegiate student-athletes at the end of the day, and we have to be respectful and mindful of the many things they could be going through athletically, academically, socially, and personally.
Having said all of that, I witnessed several offensive possessions in the Alabama game where a South Carolina player had a one-on-one situation that, whether based on their proven skill level or physical intangibles, had a favorable matchup and, more often than not, passed up on being the aggressor and taking a shot. Some of these players have played a ton of basketball, and if confidence in optimal situations is an issue fifteen games into the regular season, I'm not sure there's any amount of encouragement from their teammates or coaching from Lamont and his staff that could fix this problem for those individuals.
Coach Paris may have some tough decisions to make because of this, regarding potentially being more hands-on with the offense or altering certain players' minutes if they can't display a willingness to attack on the offensive end.
Your feelings surrounding South Carolina's loss to Alabama may be completely different from other Gamecock fans you know, but as former South Carolina football coach Lou Holtz once said: "Things are not always as good as they seem, and things are not always as bad as they seem."
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