Archive for January, 2009

What to watch this weekend

If you’ve got nothing better to do on Saturday – and I hope you do – you can always do some scoreboard-watching. We’re about two-thirds of the way through the regular season, and South Carolina stands a reasonable chance of being an NCAA tournament team. So a lot of games are about to become important.
Entering [...]

Horn talks 'tucky

Just got back from Darrin Horn’s media availability. He had some things to say about playing in Lexington, his hometown, but we’ll hold that back for a story running in Saturday’s paper.
Meanwhile, USC is playing the SEC leader and the nation’s 24th-ranked team (at least for a few more days, considering the Cats fell at [...]

Oh, those calls

An interesting note from last night’s game:
The combined 80 free throws and 56 fouls were not only a record for a men’s game at the CLA, but were the most in a South Carolina men’s game since the 2004 SEC tournament. (USC and Arkansas combined to get whistled 59 times and attempt 81 free throws. [...]

More SEC changes

Well, so much for that epic Darrin Horn-Dennis Felton, former Western Kentcuky coaches matchup.
Felton has been fired by Georgia, in a surprise to absolutely no one. It comes less than a week before Georgia was to play South Carolina, which would have pitted Horn against the man he succeeded at WKU.
That saves us from rehashing [...]

A.J. Ogilvy …

… will be making the trip to Columbia, according to Vanderbilt team spokesman Andy Boggs.
That’s not a surprise, but there had been a question with Ogilvy battling sickness and a foot injury. The sophomore center, who was a first-team All-SEC in the preseason, has only scored 11 points in the past two games. He played [...]

New bracketology

Third blog post of the day. Hope that makes up for a full weekend without one.
South Carolina has improved its lot in the latest mock NCAA tournament bracket on ESPN.com. The Gamecocks are now the third team to miss the field, according to Joe Lunardi’s projection on Monday. Last week they were among the “next four [...]

One ranking of the SEC teams

One of my new favorite web sites is MrSEC.com, which is a wonderful one-stop way to find out what’s being written about each of the 12 league schools. The writers of the site, based in Tennessee, also occasionally throw in their own thoughts, one of which struck my eye Monday.
Writer John Pennington, looking ahead to the [...]

Reeling Vanderbilt, and resurgent USC

South Carolina still isn’t getting much attention nationally – believe me, I’m doing Google news searches every day – but the program’s resurgence is being noticed around the SEC.
I just got off the SEC teleconference, where a couple overlooked items came up:
- This weekend seven SEC teams played at home, including two nonconference games. The [...]

More Friday hoop notes

A few more thing to report from today’s media availability. If you want off-beat, painful interview material, scroll to the end:
- The events of the past 48 hours – a stirring home win over No. 24 Florida, hero Zam Fredrick appearing on ESPN2, people jumping full-force on the basketball bandwagon – can have a way [...]

Bigger lineup will return

Look for South Carolina to go big again in the starting lineup on Saturday night. Coach Darrin Horn said Friday that the move Wednesday went well enough that he would probably go that way again when Ole Miss comes to town.
Sophomore center Sam Muldrow’s entrance into the lineup, replacing guard Brandis Raley-Ross, created a front [...]