AMHERST — Wednesday night’s scoreline was both indicative and not indicative of the 40 minutes of basketball played at the Mullins Center.
On the one hand, UMass made enough plays – especially late – to keep the game competitive with South Carolina. Despite giving up layup after layup for much of the second half, the Minutemen stayed within a basket of the Gamecocks for the first 13½ minutes of the half. Even when South Carolina stretched the lead to 11 with 2:40 remaining, UMass had an answer to make it a two-point game with eight seconds left.
But the Gamecocks did shoot 64 percent from the floor in the second half, and most of those baskets were uncontested layups. No amount of pressure UMass applied on the South Carolina backcourt seemed to slow down the Gamecocks from throwing the ball ahead for those easy scores. South Carolina finished with 52 points in the paint, a dominant advantage compared to UMass’ 22 paint points in the eventual 84-80 triumph over the Minutemen.
“It definitely gave them momentum, especially toward the end of the second half when they went on a little bit of a run and got some easy shots,” junior guard Carl Pierre said. “Just all types of easy looks … but yeah (it hurt us).”
The Gamecocks (6-3) came into the game with a plan of attacking the Minutemen’s press early and often. It didn’t work at first as UMass (5-4) forced six turnovers in the first five minutes of play, but South Carolina had just 11 the rest of the way as it carved up the Minutemen’s pressure.
South Carolina also stayed disciplined to its strategy and passed up open jump shots to instead attack the basket and force the issue near the rim. It worked as the Gamecocks made 31 two-point baskets compared to just two 3-pointers.
“I did not want to be passive against the press, I don’t believe in being passive against the press,” South Carolina coach Frank Martin said. “I wanted to attack the press, and not just attack it, but shoot it and I wanted to attack the rim. The rule was if the ball gets to the paint and we kick then shoot the jump shot, but if the ball doesn’t hit the paint, don’t shoot the jump shot.”
A main reason South Carolina found those openings was UMass not sticking to its own game plan about defending the Gamecocks in the press. South Carolina kept its power forwards – mainly Alanzo Frink and Maik Kotsar – near the half-court line as options in case of trouble. UMass coach Matt McCall said he was fine with letting those two players bring the ball up the floor for South Carolina, but the Minutemen instead rushed too much pressure at them.
Frink and Kotsar were able to dump the ball to the open man and it eventually worked its way into easy points as UMass was caught out of position.
“We kept telling our guys when they throw it to Frink, when they throw it to Kotsar, when they throw it to those guys, do not run at them,” McCall said. “Allow those guys to try to initiate offense because they’re bigs, they’re not handlers. We kept running at those guys and it was layups on the backside, and when it wasn’t a layup, it was an offensive rebound tip-in.”
The struggles affected freshman center Tre Mitchell the most because he was ultimately left as the lone man back on many of those breakouts for South Carolina. He was stuck between covering the forward occupying space near the basket or the guard who snuck through to the corner. Each decision had its pros and cons, but none of them made the shots more difficult for the Gamecocks.
“They threw it ahead and that’s leaving me with a big behind me and now one person open on the side to kind of dictate playing the middle,” Mitchell said. “If I play up, they’re throwing up over the top or if I drop back, it’s just a wide open layup. We just need to get back to practice and fix our rotations.”
Yet despite all the issues with the press, UMass continued to find ways to keep the game close by staying aggressive on offense. When the Minutemen weren’t able to finish at the rim, they forced their way to the free-throw line a season-high 34 times, including 23 times in the second half, and converted on 24 of those foul shots. Those free points combined with the 10 3-pointers UMass hit helped keep the Minutemen within striking distance.
McCall said he thought going into the game that the free throws would be a telling sign of which team won the game. But despite earning eight more trips to the line than South Carolina and making eight more free throws than the Gamecocks, it wasn’t enough to overcome the defensive woes.
“I felt like if we could win the free-throw discrepancy, we could win the game,” McCall said. “We didn’t because we gave up 84 points. We gave up 84 points and they hit two 3s, that’s a problem, that is a major, major problem that we need to get corrected. … You can’t give up that many two-point baskets and win, that’s a lot of twos.”