A few comments on a very hard-fought win at SC.

First, if you told me KJ would essentially be shut down on the road in the SEC, I would have told you - we lose the game.

Special praise to Parker, Jeter, Odom, Bright and Fuller - and all around to our bench which basically came through.

Our free throw shooting remained crummy - but Parker gave us a brief streak of made free throws that kept our lead steady. KJ also hit some big ones.  

Our bigs fought hard in this one.  That part of the game certainly was not pretty - but Moats and Henderson scored some and banged, Odom played well... Jeter got some inside points and, most importantly, we rebounded really impressively.  To win the rebounding war on the road is never something to take for granted.  We also fought through pretty major foul trouble. Our guards, however, also get commendations for rebounding - in fact, KJ led the team in rebounds with 8.

Two big turning points to me - Odom took a beautiful charge from Ellington in the second half that stopped a run.  When KJ picked up a big foul, Fuller came in and hit a very solid three to put the lead back to a safe level.  There were a lot of big plays - but those two are big to me because that is some upperclass leadership we have been waiting for.

Really nice defensive effort.  Good close out of the first half (after a very bad one versus Ole Miss.)

Kentucky, Ole Miss and SC have all pressed us heavily - and picked us up high in the front court to disrupt our offense.  It basically keeps on working.  We responded decently - but still did not look crisp on o.  We did enough to survive though.  Once or twice we really broke the press well.  We need to work on that because we are going to see more of it.  Our bigs will need to make more clean catches on the run to finish.  Again, when we are being pressed and harassed, our offensive flow really is worse...we seem so happy to get across the time line, we lose our aggression to move the ball.  Fuller did play with some good push today - and we needed it. Parker did too.

Reiterating the obvious - but a genuine positive: Jeter and Bright are very good freshmen, and Parker is rounding into an excellent addition to the line-up.  Really a good d and rebounding effort by the team on a day their leader had trouble scoring.  That is big step forward - especially on the road where we looked pretty ragged a week ago.  Still too many turnovers... still should hit a bunch more free throws... but we did not wilt - and at the five minute mark we certainly had the opportunity to do so.

like all our other games we win comfortably if we hit our free throws - to win still not hitting them in a hostile place is just great - kudos to team and coach.

Agree with the post.

I'd like to see us go small. Johnson, Parker, Odom, Jeter and Bright.
That would make us more difficult to press and the offense could spread the court.