Shockers pounce on South Carolina early for 23-point win, ticket to Cancun championship
The Shockers headed to the Cancun Challenge to discover how good they might be this early in the season.
They aced the first test, burying South Carolina early to open with an impressive 70-47 victory over the Gamecocks on Tuesday evening at the Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya in Cancun, Mexico. The Shockers will play West Virginia, which beat Northern Iowa 60-55, in Wednesday’s championship game, which tips at 7:30 p.m. Central time on CBS Sports Network.
After beating five out-matched teams at Koch Arena, WSU took a step (or two) up in competition and came out looking even better. It is the first 6-0 start by the Shockers since their historic 35-0 start from the 2013-14 season.
Thank Erik Stevenson, the sophomore guard who scored a game-high 19 points, all in the first half, to go along with eight rebounds, four assists and three steals. He was the game’s best player and could be entering a breakthrough year, as WSU coach Gregg Marshall paid him the ultimate compliment after the game.
“Erik Stevenson played a tremendous game and tonight he showed me signs of some Ron Baker,” Marshall said on his postgame radio interview. “I’ve heard that comparison before, but I’ve been hesitant to say it myself. I would love for him to eventually become a pro and make a lot of money and handle his business as a big-time guy. And (Stevenson) is doing that now.”
Stevenson appeared to earn the respect of South Carolina coach Frank Martin, as the two stopped in the postgame handshake line.
After an up-and-down freshman campaign, Stevenson is enjoying a strong start to his second season with the Shockers.
“Last year everything was flying at me 100 times the speed that it really was,” Stevenson said in his postgame radio interview. “I had a lot of people in my corner saying that next year would be better, just get through the year. It was hard to believe when we were 1-6 in conference, but we stuck with it and trusted the process.
“I believed in Coach and Coach believed in me. Now we’re 6-0 and fighting for that championship spot.”
Trey Wade added 11 points and six rebounds and Jamarius Burton added 10 points and five assists.
The Shockers once again leaned on their sturdy defense, which held South Carolina (4-2) to 32.1% shooting and more importantly, kept the Gamecocks off the glass. USC entered as a top-10 offensive rebounding team in the country, but grabbed a season-low 25.5% (11 offensive rebounds in 43 chances) of its own misses against WSU.
“That was a big key,” Marshall said on radio. “We were beating them to loose balls and getting opportunity basketball, which was a key for us and helped us establish that lead. We basically led the whole game.”
South Carolina did bother WSU with its intense defensive pressure, which resulted in a season-high 16 turnovers for the Shockers. But WSU shot better (41.1%) and out-scored the Gamecocks 17-8 at the free throw line.
WSU won the game by burying South Carolina in a hole in the first half, mainly because of the electric scoring from Stevenson.
He drilled a three-pointer early in the game, as did Wade, that put the Shockers up 8-3 after the first media timeout. Then Stevenson scored seven straight points — another three, a short jumper and another mid-range jumper — and Martin called timeout after the Gamecocks fell behind 15-5 with 13:52 remaining.
Burton was the next Shocker to give WSU a good spurt, as he went into attack mode off the bench and scored back-to-back times on drives, then drove one more time and dumped it off for Isaiah Poor Bear-Chandler to slam it home. After Jaime Echenique scored on a hook, WSU led 23-7 with 10:46 remaining and forced Martin to burn another timeout.
“We got punched in the mouth,” Martin said in his postgame radio interview. “We had no answer. They didn’t let us run offense.”
The lead grew to 18 points, 27-9, but South Carolina made its run at the lead with a 13-2 run late in the first half to trim WSU’s lead to 29-22 with 2:48 remaining. For the first time since the start of the game, things became tense on the WSU sideline.
That feeling didn’t last long, as the Shockers closed the first half on a 12-0 run to take a 41-22 lead into halftime.
“The way to beat pressure is to apply pressure,” Stevenson said on radio. “If they’re coming at you, then you’ve got to go right back at them. If you’re shying away from that, then they’re going to come even harder. We attacked the paint and we knew since they were denying the wing that there wouldn’t be any help in the gaps. If you can beat your man and get to the paint, then that’s four guys collapsing and something is going to be open.”
Wade hit an important three in the corner to stem the South Carolina rally, then Stevenson finished a three-point play and added two more free throws to finish with 19 first-half points. But the rally will be remembered most by the play of 7-foot junior Asbjorn Midtgaard, who pieced together perhaps the best 20-second stretch of his career.
It started with Midtgaard challenging a drive by South Carolina and forcing a miss. The Gamecocks rebounded their own miss, then Midtgaard erased the put-back with a block. At the other end, Sherfield took it in for a layup that missed but Midtgaard was there sprinting the floor to slam the put-back home for the 19-point lead and bring WSU’s rowdy contingent in Cancun to their feet.
That created a sizable advantage that South Carolina never managed to close within 16 points in the second half.
After beating out-matched opponents in the friendly confines of Koch Arena, WSU stepped outside of its comfort zone on Tuesday and flex its muscles with a convincing victory over an SEC opponent.
While South Carolina is projected to finish near the bottom of the SEC standings, the victory over a Power Five opponent on a neutral floor should come in handy for the Shockers in their attempt to build an NCAA Tournament at-large resume.
This story was originally published November 26, 2019 at 7:08 PM.
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