South Carolina Gamecocks vs. Mississippi Rebels / Black Bears Basketball: A Quick Recap

The Gamecocks' season is likely over following a 66-55 loss to the Mississippi Rebels / Black Bears.

I saw a few positives in this game. Bruce Ellington seemed a little more chary of his shot selection, which may suggest that Darrin Horn has been telling him the right things. He also finished with four assists, which is above his season average and getting closer to where he needs to be as a quality point guard. We made some attempt to move the ball inside, although it often seemed like we failed to finish good scoring opportunities in those situations.

At the end of the day, though, many of the same old problems emerged. Carolina struggled to knock down shots all afternoon and seemed to move away from its more aggressive offensive approach at the most important moments of the game, often undermining strong runs by reverting to its typical approach of jacking up threes.

There's really no way to sugarcoat this one. We lost by 11 to a very average basketball team. With all due respect to Ole Miss, the Rebels / Bears (what are they going by these days, by the way?) are much like last year's Gamecocks, a team with one great player surrounded by a lot of marginal role players. With Warren off his game today, we had a nice opportunity to win this game, but with such a poor shooting performance, it's hard to beat all but the worst teams.

We'll talk more soon about what this team needs to do moving forward.