USC Aiken men's basketball team ramps up rebounding in second half to cruise past Erskine

Nov. 26—USC AIKEN 96, ERSKINE 64

AIKEN — The USC Aiken men's basketball team knew a challenge was coming with Erskine's visit Tuesday night to the Convocation Center.

A challenge? From a team off to an 0-4 start to the season, with those four losses coming by an average of 33.5 points per game?

Yes, a challenge. Maybe not so much from a results standpoint, but from a how Erskine plays basketball point of view. That was going to test the Pacers, as was the mental aspect of this USCA team, 11 new players and all, still working on gelling together while riding the high of back-to-back blowout wins to reach 3-1.

This was going to be a test of the Pacers' focus, of their mindset, of their ability to treat a game like it's 0-0 and handle the task at hand.

They did that — for a half. A sluggish start to the game quickly ramped up late in the first half and into the second, and the Pacers romped to a 32-point win that wasn't necessarily as satisfying as it looks on paper.

"Tonight, Coach (Mark) Peeler, known him for a long time, does a good job with his guys. They play a five-out motion with a lot of screens, cuts, curls at the basket, but primarily a ton of 3s," explained USCA head coach Mark Vanderslice. "They really tested our assignments on the defensive end, especially in the first half with all the cuts. We just got kind of mixed up in the crud of all the movement. Our assignments just really weren't as crisp as they needed to be in the first half. I know we were up, but I still really wasn't happy with our performance in the first half."

Vanderslice looked at his Pacers' (4-1) performance as a tale of two halves, and he called back to a familiar benchmark — rebounding — to tell him how tough, how spirited and how enthusiastically his team played.

In the first half? USCA was plus-six, which is indeed a positive but still not to the Pacers' liking. In the second half? Plus-23. They pulled down 21 offensive rebounds, with 14 of those coming in the second half, and turned those into 24 second-chance points.

"When you look at both halves, you can really look at that one central statistic and say, hey, we were ready and we came to play in the second half," Vanderslice said. "They responded in the second half. I was proud of them. (Deandre Smart) did a really good job of taking advantage of some of the lack of size by Erskine, and we really wanted to get the ball over the top to the middle third, and we did that. He did a great job tonight, so I was proud of him."

Smart led the Pacers in both scoring and rebounding, racking up 17 points and 13 boards in 22 minutes off the bench. The 6-foot-7, 227-pound senior forward from Elon routinely cashed in on his size advantage inside, and if he wasn't scoring he was at least drawing a foul.

"I just want to thank my teammates. My teammates kept on finding me," said Smart, who also scored 17 points Nov. 22 in a 94-69 win at Newberry. "Coach was doing a good job of letting them know to find me. Without them, it wouldn't be possible to get 17 points. But I feel like I did take advantage of the size and just finished down low."

Senior guard Caleb Byrd, one of four returners from last year's team, also had a double-double with 11 points and 11 rebounds while adding four steals. Junior guard Montraivis White made three 3-pointers on his way to 12 points, and redshirt-freshman forward Jackson Roberts had 12 points and five rebounds.

True freshman guard Jonah Lawrence had a team-high six assists, and as a team the Pacers had 15 helpers compared to 11 turnovers. Like with the first-half rebounding, that was a positive — but not exactly the crisp level of play Vanderslice wants to see.

"I think some of that was a little bit of our approach," he said. "I think we just had, coming off of two wins, two pretty big wins, I think we just didn't have the mentality of humble and hungry that we typically want to bestow upon our program and our guys, but 15 assists, 11 turnovers, that's still good by most measures.

"I'm looking for full potential to be satisfied. I'm not necessarily always looking at results. It's good. It comes. But I want to see all these guys perform to their maximum potential. When I see that, then I get happy. That's how you please me. That's how I get satisfied."

Up next for USCA is another home game at 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 29 against Fayetteville State, which will follow the women's team's home opener at 1:30 p.m. against Belmont Abbey.