The team nobody wants to play has survived to play again.
South Carolina beat Missouri 63-54 Wednesday night in the SEC Tournament. It was its third win the last four games and fifth in the last nine. The 11th-seeded Gamecocks (16-15, 6-12 SEC) will now face No. 6 Ole Miss (20-11, 11-7 SEC) in the late game Thursday night here at Bridgestone Arena.
The winner of that game will face third-seeded Georgia (20-10, 11-7) on Friday night about 10 p.m. South Carolina was one of only two SEC teams to beat the Bulldogs twice this season. The other one was No. 1-ranked and undefeated Kentucky (31-0).
The Gamecocks got 18 points and four 3-pointers from guard Sindarius Thornwell and 12 points from Michael Carrera. But South Carolina won the game on the defensive end, holding Missouri to 36 percent shooting from the floor, 25 percent from 3-point range, and forcing 16 turnovers.
“Mentally we’re in a good place now,” South Carolina coach Frank Martin said. “We’ve started worrying about all the things that matter and not the things that don’t. … We had to learn.”
Missouri’s season ends at 9-23. A traditional basketball powerhouse, the Tigers’ final record represents the most losses in school history and the fewest wins since 1966-67. It’s the first time in nearly four decades the football team won more games than the basketball team.
“It’s been a tough year,” Missouri coach Kim Anderson said.
Conversely, South Carolina has been one of the league’s better teams in the last third of the season. Among the Gamecocks’ narrow decisions down the stretch was 78-74 loss to No. 18 Arkansas in Columbia and a 59-51 loss on the road at Alabama. They beat Tennessee on the road 60-49 to end the regular season.
“That’s what we work for,” Carrera said. “We’ve been up and down all year, but now it’s time to show what we’ve got.”
South Carolina lost to Ole Miss in Oxford 65-49 in the second conference game of the season.
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