National reaction

You know you’re having a special night when the current Heisman Trophy winner is praising you.

During the waning minutes of Devan Downey’s latest, and greatest, performance, Alabama tailback Mark Ingram was extolling Downey’s virtues via Twitter. When it ended, Ingram wrote that he “respects the heart and passion Devan Downey played with tonight. The man balled out tonight!”

ESPN’s Andy Katz Tweeted: “Amazing performance by South Carolina. Devan Downey is easily one of the most valuable players in the country to his team.”

(They weren’t the only ones tweeting. At one point the USC-Kentucky game was the second-most trending topic on the site. That includes everything: Haiti, the State of the Union, Miley Cyrus, whatever.)

Katz also wrote on ESPN.com about what the win means for South Carolina’s season. Here’s a link. Downey told Katz that the team took notice that ESPN itself gave South Carolina no mention when it came to new No. 1 Kentucky’s potential pitfalls.

“That’s all we were talking about [Sunday],” said South Carolina point guard Devan Downey by phone late Tuesday night. “It was like everyone acted as if they didn’t have a game Tuesday. I told the guys that we had to go out on the court and prove it again and play hard.”

Katz also touched on what this does for the Gamecocks’ NCAA hopes.

NCAA tournament selection committee chair (and UCLA AD) Dan Guerrero said two weeks ago that a lot of teams looked alike and that the selection process would be difficult if there wasn’t some separation in the coming weeks. South Carolina still has loads of work to do, but it did something Tuesday on national TV to draw attention to itself.

Another ESPN man, Pat Forde, posted an instant-reaction blog in which he compared Devan Downey to Calvin Murphy (a good comparison, if you think about it), asked if President Obama will pay a congratulary phone call to the Gamecocks, and said this about their coach:

Darrin Horn, native of Lexington, Ky., is 3-0 against the Kentucky Wildcats as coach of the Gamecocks. That isn’t bad. Horn was not recruited by UK and played at Western Kentucky instead. He also coached the Hilltoppers, and some folks in Bowling Green wanted Horn out after he failed to reach the NCAA tournament until his fifth season. Then he took Western to the Sweet 16 and returned the school’s fickle support by leaving it for bigger and better.

The Sporting News’ Mike DeCourcy pointed out that in Tuesday’s edition he actually did say Downey could “carry his team to the shocker.”

We’re due to hear more from Horn and Downey today on a local level. We’ll post more reaction and info as we get it.