Horry/Strand & Pee Dee Gamecocks - USC basketball at Coastal's HTC Arena Nov 16, 17 & 19

I'm no expert on the other teams in this thing, but there is no reason why we shouldn't at least get to the finals.

Also, this thread made me realize that we don't have a Men's/Women's basketball thread up yet.

I believe the women are 2-0 as well with a win on the road at #15 Maryland tonight.

Well, that was brutal. I caught the last 12 mins or so, and we were struggling. Each time we would hit a shot, they would come back and make a play.

Illinois State is a very good team - I would place them at the level our team was at last season. That doesn't mean I'm suggesting they will be a Final Four team, but then we certainly didn't think we were going to the Final Four until we actually did it - we were just hoping to make the NCAA tournament, but we felt we were a good 25 win type team. That's where Illinois State is right now, and they won 28-29 gms last season.....

They looked like they were ready to play a game, while our team still looked like it was half asleep. ISU was very quick and athletic: they beat us to the spots all game long, and collapsed into the lane like opposing WBB teams have done in the past against Wilson and Coates. We're supposed to be a better perimeter-shooting team this season, but we shot VERY poorly from the outside.

And to start it all off on the wrong foot, our top two post players Silva and Kotsar got into early foul trouble and were non-factors for much of the game. The officiating was a bit tight for both teams, and I felt our own team did the worst in adapting to how the game was called. We were constantly reacting and slow to the spot all game long on both sides of the court: on defense they rotated around and drove either to the basket baseline, or kicked out to perimeter jumpers and they hit a ton of them.

A very good team, when we weren't ready to play at our own top level. We had a lot of turnovers and ticky-tack fouls long after we should've known they would be called, because we were so slow to react to how they played. We played much better in the 2nd half, and even tied it in the 2nd half, but couldn't pull it out.

Now we play UTEP in the consolation bracket, and at 10:30 am at that. We better wake up......