Notes, Observations: South Carolina takes part in Garnet & Black Madness event

South Carolina men’s basketball held its second annual Garnet & Black Madness event at Colonial Life Arena on Wednesday. The team took part in a 20-minute scrimmage, shoot-a-thon and dunk contest.

Here are some notes and observations from the night.

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Scrimmage

The couple hundred fans in attendance got their first real look at this year’s team. And there’s not a ton to take away.

Everyone got a chance to play with the players split into Garnet and Black teams. The only player not in attendance was Collin Murray-Boyles, who had an illness.

There was definitely some defense played but definitely points where it looked like a glorified shoot around. Almost like what you would see in the NBA All-Star Game.

The usual suspects looked good out there. Meechie Johnson was hitting some deep threes, along with Myles Stute and some other Gamecocks. Plenty of shots were falling after a sluggish start.

Johnson led the way with 19 points on 8-of-12 shooting. Benjamin Bosmans-Verdonk, heading into his second year at South Carolina, scored 12 on 6-of-9 shooting.

For the Garnet side, Jacobi Wright had 12 points on 5-for-10 shooting. Minnesota transfer Ta’Lon Cooper shot 6-for-11 from the floor and scored 16 points.

One thing made clear was that this team still very much loves to shoot its threes. There were a bunch taken with a lot of success. But there were some struggles at times. It will be the bread and butter behind what this offense can do on the floor.

The Gamecocks went 15-for-34 (44 percent) from three-point range. Cooper had the most made shots with four threes.

One young guy who played well was freshman guard Austin Herro. He had four points on 2-of-4 shooting. Right now, it’s unclear what type of role he will have. But he could definitely be an impact shooter off the bench.

By the end of the scrimmage, there was a ton of scoring to go around. The Black team pulled away to a 56-49 win over the Garnet team.

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Dunk contest

There wasn’t much to write home about with the shoot-a-thon. In short, it was just an event where one of the players went up against a random fan in a shooting contest with different markers on the floor.

For what it’s worth, Morris Ugusuk helped a fan with a Nintendo Switch, which was interesting to see.

But the meat and potatoes of the night was the dunk contest.

With Dawn Staley, Seth Rose and Sheriff Leon Lott on hand as the judges, Zach Davis won with a score of 56. His final dunk got all 10’s from the judges.

Next up

South Carolina will have an exhibition game against Wofford next Wednesday. Tip-off is at 7 p.m. from Colonial Life Arena.

The real games will begin the following week when the Gamecocks host USC Upstate on Monday, Nov. 6. That game will start at 7 p.m. on SECN+.

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