NASHVILLE, TN — “When we were 18 down, we had them right where we wanted them,” quipped Anthony Grant as he walked to the media room at Bridgestone Arena Thursday afternoon after Alabama came from behind to knock off South Carolina, 68-63, in the first round of the Southeastern Conference Tournament.
Consider 18 down a good place to start for Alabama because that’s where the Crimson Tide found themselves with 11:40 to go in the game after Lakeem Jackson drove down the foul lane like it was an Atlanta freeway for a lefty dunk that put South Carolina ahead, 52-34. Up until that point, Alabama couldn’t hit shots, wasn’t rebounding very well and certainly wasn’t playing a lick of defense.
If looks could kill the Bridgestone Arena court would have been littered with five dead Bama bodies after that Jackson dunk. Maybe the Alabama (17-14) players have seen that look before and know the consequences because from that point on, they took control of the game at both ends of the floor.
Bama did it by taking the ball out of Devan Downey’s hands and making the Gamecocks rely on their other players. When Downey is in control, good thing happen.
When Bama denied Downey, bad things happened in bunches for the Gamecocks.
“The last ten minutes we had a hard time scoring,” said South Carolina coach Darrin Horn. “They tried to take the ball out of Devan’s hands a little bit.”
With Downey controlling the ball, the South Carolina offense was aggressive and attacking. Once Alabama neutralized him by forcing him into a constant double team, the South Carolina offense went stale. In the final 11 minutes of the game, South Carolina only scored nine points.
“We just played like a team that was trying to hang on instead of a team that was trying to win and pull away,” lamented Horn, whose Gamecocks finished the season 15-16.
Down 54-36, Alabama scored 10 straight points, closing to 54-46 with 9:23 to go when Mikhail Torrance scored on a driving layup in which he somehow sneaked past Sam Muldrow, who finished the game with five blocked shots and at least 10 more shots he altered.
A couple of Ramon Galloway free throws with 8:49 to go temporarily stopped the bleeding and extended South Carolina’s lead back to 10 (56-46), but Bama scored the next seven, trimming the deficit to four (57-53) on a pair of Justin Knox free throws with 5:40 left.
When Knox scored sneaked in behind Muldrow for an easy two with 2:07 left, the gap closed to one (60-59). Horn knew South Carolina was in trouble from a confidence standpoint. Horn tried to get his team to stay in the moment and take it one play at a time, but they were clearly rattled.
“I just think there wasn’t the confidence there collectively because we’d been in this situation so many times and it had not gone our way,” Horn said. “You know, we didn’t have anybody step up and play with the confidence on either end, really. When it happened on the offensive end, it started happening on the defensive end, too … gave up a lot of easy drives and easy post-ups down the stretch.”
Trailing by one, Alabama forced a turnover at midcourt which led to a Torrance layup with 1:41 left that gave the Crimson Tide its first lead since the 10:52 mark in the first half.
Galloway tied the game at 62 with 1:18 to go when he hit a three from the left baseline, but Torrance gave Alabama the lead on the ensuing possession, driving through the South Carolina defense to hit a lefty layup with 58 seconds remaining for a 64-62 Alabama lead.
South Carolina had a chance to tied the game with 21 seconds to go but Downey missed the first of two free throws. Alabama countered with a dunk at the other end when Muldrow let JaMychal Green get behind him on the press with 15 seconds left.
Muldrow compounded his defensive mistake by throwing the ball away when he tried to get the ball to Brandis-Raley Ross against the Alabama press. Mitchell made the steal, got fouled and hit a pair of free throws to seal the deal and advance Alabama into the second round against top seeded and second-ranked Kentucky.
GAME NOTES: Torrance led Alabama with 17 points while Knox gave the Tide 16 … South Carolina was led by Downey, who scored 21 in his final collegiate game … LaKeem Jackson led all rebounders with 14 for South Carolina … Only 18 three-pointers were taken in the game. South Carolina went 3-10 while Alabama went 3-8 … South Carolina won the game at the foul line, hitting 21-26, while South Carolina managed just 14-20.