Huge win for the Gamecocks over UGA on Thornwell's return to the lineup. Sin showed how much of an impact he has on the team - after sitting out the past 6 games, he comes back to score 19 pts, pull down 11 rebounds, and corral 6 steals to lead the way to victory.

That kind of effort in any of the 3 losses USC suffered without him, would have made them 3 wins easily. But its water under the bridge - can't do anything about them now....

With this win, it helps stem the bleeding from the 3 losses. Seton Hall and Clemson were both higher-RPI opponents than UGA, and they would have had us in the driver's seat had we beaten them - instead we lost to both by a combined 5 pts without our top player.

But we came into SEC play last season with a RPI rating of in the top 30 due to being 13-0, but a SOS in the 200s due to the weakness of that OOC schedule. We didn't help ourselves with losses to the weaker SEC teams plus getting swept by UGA. Now it looks like with this win vs UGA we'll be in the top 40 RPI-wise, and with a SOS in the top 50, and that is a substantial improvement.

Now we'll next face 8-5 (0-2) Texas A&M at home Saturday, 8-6 (1-1) Tennessee away next Wednesday, and 9-5 (0-2) Ole Miss at home next Saturday. Texas A&M and Ole Miss are currently the bottom teams in the SEC standings.

Tennessee has improved their play a good bit recently, but IMO we have a great chance to go 3-0 during the next 3 games, to improve to 14-3 (4-0). I have no idea what our chances will be against either UF or UK - those two will be played after the 3 next up on our schedule I listed, although we play UF twice. The 1st game against them will be in Columbia, and we're 24-4 and counting at home starting last season....