Trends Of The Game: South Carolina Vs. Notre Dame

South Carolina's men's basketball team saw a great individual effort and higher 2nd half efficiency overcome bad starts in a win over Notre Dame.

Lamont Paris and the South Carolina Gamecocks have done all the right things that constitutes winning basketball in their first five games of the season, a big reason they came into Tuesday night's matchup against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish with an undefeated record. Although they didn't make things easy for themselves, Carolina was able to come up with enough offensive firepower to. What were the positive and negative trends from Carolina's matchup in the ACC-SEC Challenge?

Positives

Meechie Johnson

The beautiful part about the game of basketball is that if your team collectively has an off-night shooting the basketball, like South Carolina did, you can have one individual go into 'takeover mode', and that's what the redshirt junior guard did against the Irish. The Ohio native seemingly couldn't miss with the ball in his hand, making nine of his fifteen shots from the floor, four 3-pointers included, leading to a career high 29 points.

Second Half Shot Selection 

In the first half, Paris' team took 22 total shots from the floor, and 14 of them were from behind the arc. It felt like at times the Gamecocks weren't even looking to try and drive inside to the paint, but that all changed after the first media timeout in the second half. In the final 15 minutes and 39 seconds of the contest, Carolina attacked driving lanes at a much higher clip, drawing more fouls from the Irish while simultaneously giving themselves more high percentage looks.

Negatives

Sluggish Starts

With South Carolina's men's basketball team coming off of a nine-day break, it wasn't a complete surprise that they got off to a slow start. The concerning part was how long it took the Gamecocks to get going offensively, as Carolina missed each of their first five shots, and didn't score until the 14:51 mark in the first half thanks to two BJ Mack free throws. The Gamecocks didn't reach 10 points until the 10:58 mark of the first half. In the second half, Paris' team didn't hit their first shot until the 15:11 and missed 11 of their first 12 shots.

Although there are some things to correct, South Carolina should be happy with this end result, as it adds another Power 6 win to their résumé before into the second half of their non-conference slate, beginning with George Washington this coming Friday night.

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