As star point guard Devan Downey said, it’s about pride.

This afternoon at Nashville, Tenn., against Vanderbilt, the slip-sliding Gamecocks (14-15 overall, 5-10 in the SEC) will try to avoid a losing regular-season record.

“It goes without saying that confidence is an issue right now,” USC coach Darrin Horn said, “but you go on the road and fight and battle and try to put your best foot forward.”

The problem: The Commodores (23-6, 12-3) are the league’s best team behind two-loss Kentucky. Plus it’s senior day for talented point guard Jermaine Beal, who is leading the squad at 14.5 points a game.
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But then there’s Tennessee.

Not only have the Gamecocks lost six straight to the Volunteers, but the average margin of defeat has been 17 points, with three games decided by 24 points or more.

Tennessee is one of only two SEC teams that South Carolina star Devan Downey has never beaten. (The other is Mississippi State, which visits Columbia next week.)

It was Feb. 2007 when USC last beat their Eastern Division rival.
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That strength made the difference for the Bulldogs against South Carolina.

Georgia made nine straight free throws in the final 2:09, Jeremy Price scored 16 points in his first start of the season, including the go-ahead points with 1:09 remaining, and Georgia rallied to beat South Carolina, 66-61, on Saturday.
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“I’ve seen everything. I’ve seen probably 30 different defenses,” South Carolina senior guard Brandis Raley-Ross said. “I’ve seen teams try to put a taller guy on him, try to run two at him.”

And yet, Downey is still on an incredible tear, scoring 30 or more points in five of seven SEC games entering tonight’s game at Tennessee.

The run has created national buzz for Downey. For opposing coaches, it has brought more headaches and a classic dilemma:

When a player scores no matter what you do, do you still focus on him? Or do you assume he will get his points and focus on preventing his supporting cast from beating you?
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The only difference: Reaves is Kiffin’s brother-in-law and had an office down the hall from Kiffin in Tennessee’s football building.

But Reaves will not be joining his brother-in-law in Los Angeles. While Kiffin finishes assembling his Southern Cal staff, Reaves is stuck in coaching limbo in Knoxville after new Vols coach Derek Dooley chose not to retain the former South Carolina assistant.

Three weeks after Kiffin left Tennessee after one turbulent year, Reaves admits being stunned – both by Kiffin’s abrupt departure and the fact that Kiffin never told his brother-in-law of his intentions.

“The disappointment was more of me not knowing about the situation. You would think that I would have some kind of heads-up on the situation. But that’s how it works out sometimes,” Reaves said during a recent phone interview.
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The Gamecocks have a different take on that.

Yeah, that kind of a win is enough to send you skyward. But here’s gravity for the team, to return it to the turf: South Carolina is 12-8 overall, 3-3 in the SEC.
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And yet it wasn’t enough.

Downey’s performance Saturday, the sight of a 5-foot-9 guard carrying his team, will belong to the memories of those that witnessed it.

But, this time, the improbable game-winning shot belonged to Florida.

After hitting what appeared to be a game-winning banker with 5.1 seconds to go, Downey and his USC teammates were stunned on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Chandler Parsons that lifted Florida to a 58-56 victory Saturday.
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Parsons, a junior forward, swished a wide-open three-pointer from the wing as time expired Saturday to give the University of Florida a 58-56 victory against visiting South Carolina at O’Connell Center. An announced attendance of 12,094 roared with amazement as Parsons ran down the court before being tackled by his teammates.
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But even after an 85-74 loss at home to Baylor, the star of the South Carolina men’s basketball team sounded hopeful.

“As funny as this sounds, we feel like we’re right there,” Devan Downey said. “When I say right there, we watch film and we see what we do wrong on the defensive end. We feel like we’re right there, right there to turn that corner.”

It was hard to see that on Saturday, as the undermanned Gamecocks were overmatched by a taller, more experienced team. Baylor (11-1) led almost wire-to-wire, using its height and outside shooting to pull away.

Meanwhile South Carolina (8-4) struggled to hit shots, shooting 35 percent from the field and 8 of 28 on 3-pointers.
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If only the Gamecocks’ offense had showed up, too.

For the second consecutive year, USC started off the new year with a dud, flailing and failing against the Big East’s worst defense in a 20-7 loss to Connecticut before an announced crowd of 45,254 at chilly Legion Field.

USC (7-6) dropped to 1-3 in bowl games under Steve Spurrier, who began his postgame remarks with an apology.

“The first thing I want to do, and hopefully half the team does, is apologize to about 30,000 Gamecocks that came down here to see a football game, and we couldn’t put one on,” Spurrier said.
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But a few days after announcing he was leaving, Norwood said he was returning for his senior year to pursue team and individual goals and improve his draft stock. It’s been a banner year for Norwood, who broke the school’s record for career sacks and became the first USC player in 25 years to make The Associated Press’ All-America first team.

As he prepares for his final game with the Gamecocks, Norwood sat down recently with The State’s Joseph Person and discussed a variety of topics, including his decision to return to USC and his most memorable college moments.

QUESTION: You played a lot of sports growing up. At what point did you narrow it down to football?

ANSWER: After my sophomore year. That was my first year on varsity. My freshman year in high school, I played D-tackle and D-end. My sophomore year my coach moved me to linebacker and jut let me run. I played basketball that year, too. I was on the JV team. He called me in his office and was like, ‘You’re not going anywhere in basketball. … You’re going to play football.’ That’s when I really started to hone in on it.
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Last summer, Horn was trying to finish off the schedule for his first season as USC’s basketball coach, and Wofford agreed to visit Columbia that season – with one catch. The small private school wanted USC to return the trip a year later.

With his options exhausted, Horn agreed.

“It’s great to go to a state school and all that,” Horn said this week. “But in the big picture of things, this was a different approach because we were trying to finish (the schedule).”

As a result, USC makes a rare road trip to a non-BCS school today, where it will play Wofford in its 3,500-seat arena. The state’s flagship school, with an undergrad enrollment of nearly 30,000, will be playing at a Spartanburg private school with 1,500 students.
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“I thought that was always great,” Mangus said. “It was another week of practice that we got that everybody else didn’t get.”

The Gamecocks are scheduled to practice 14 times prior to facing Connecticut in the Jan. 2 Papajohns.com Bowl in Birmingham, Ala. – nearly the equivalent of the 15 practices the NCAA allows in the spring.

And while most of the bowl workouts will focus on the Huskies, Steve Spurrier and his staff also will use them to look at younger players who were either redshirted or played sparingly this season.

The third- and fourth-teamers scrimmaged twice this week. And though a couple of reserve tailbacks were injured Thursday when Eric Baker likely tore ligaments in his left knee and Bryce Sherman sustained a concussion, Spurrier plans a couple more scrimmages when the weather is nice.
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1. Sustaining momentum

Coach Steve Spurrier wants to bottle the good energy stemming from the Clemson win and carry it through the bowl season to Signing Day. He knows if he can sign a freshman class similar to the one from 2009, the 2010 Gamecocks will be in good shape.

How do you sustain momentum? Well, talk players who are considering the NFL draft into staying. Chris Culliver, Clifton Geathers and Weslye Saunders all might have an eye for a leap.

Secondly, work on keeping this group of assistant coaches intact. Shane Beamer, Jay Graham and Eric Wolford are already surfacing as potential candidates for jobs elsewhere.
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