South Carolina basketball beats Mississippi St., ends 7-game skid. What we learned

Thirty-two days.

That’s how long it had been since South Carolina men’s basketball won a game.

It hadn’t been particularly close, either — the Gamecocks were outscored by a total of 131 points in that span, including a 47-point loss to Florida which marked the worst margin of defeat in the Lamont Paris era. The closest USC got to snapping the streak was an overtime loss to LSU where it didn’t make a field goal in the final 1 minute, 34 seconds of play.

In the trudges of a seven-game losing streak, a glimmer of hope appeared Saturday afternoon: USC welcomed the Mississippi State Bulldogs to Colonial Life Arena, and the Gamecocks were actually predicted to win by ESPN, opening as 1.5-point betting favorites. The only thing that stood in the way was SEC leading scorer Josh Hubbard.

Hope became reality on Saturday as the Gamecocks contained Hubbard, overcame their normal shooting woes and held off the Bulldogs for a 97-89 victory, USC’s first win since Jan. 20.

“The rest of the season is the shortest part of the season,” Paris said. “But it’s the most important part of the season for us. So we’ll approach every game like that.”

Containing Hubbard

Hubbard is more than an offensive centerpiece for Mississippi State (15-16, 5-9 SEC). He is the offense. His 22.4 points and 17.2 field-goal attempts per game lead the SEC.

There’s no doubt containing Hubbard would be priority No. 1 for USC’s defense, and things seemed to go to plan. The Gamecocks double-teamed the Bulldogs’ star guard after nearly every ball screen, forcing Hubbard to either force a shot with multiple defenders guarding him or swing the ball to a teammate.

USC (12-15, 3-13) held Hubbard to just two points on 1-for-8 shooting in the first half. He finished the game with 13 points on 4-of-20 shooting.

“We always were on him with one man, and then we had another man who half of his responsibility was being close to him,” Paris said. “I‘m going to give a lot of praise to our guys. I already have, and I will continue to for their discipline, and their obedience, in terms of what it was to follow a game plan that we had talked about for only the last couple of days.”

The Bulldogs were able to get some secondary offense from senior guard Jayden Epps. He led the game with 13 points at halftime. Epps went down with an apparent knee injury late in the first half and never returned to the game.

Mississippi State forward and 7-footer Quincy Ballard found some success on offense against the undersized USC roster, putting up seven points and seven rebounds in the first half. He finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds.

What slump?

It hasn’t been the best shooting year for USC. The Gamecocks entered Saturday’s game shooting 43.8% from the floor and 30.4% on 3-pointers, good for last and second-last in the SEC, respectively.

But if you had only seen the Gamecocks’ game against the Bulldogs, you’d never know there was a shooting problem.

USC shot 63.3% from the floor and 45.5% from beyond the arc in the first half. The Gamecocks went on three separate runs of three straight made baskets or more in the half, including a run of 10 baskets in a row in taking a 37-26 lead with five minutes left in the half.

“We always want to come into games being aggressive. Shots were falling tonight like we expected. We got a lot of great shooters on this team, and we just got to come out every night and show it,” USC guard Kobe Knox said. “We haven’t in the past, but today, we definitely did.”

The Gamecocks went to the locker room up 46-39 at the half. Their 97 points at the end of the game was the most scored in a game under Paris.

USC finished shooting 55.4% from the floor and 12 for 24 from the 3-point line. Meechie Johnson and Mike Sharavjamts led the team with 21 points each. Five USC players finished with double-digit points.

Needed a win

Winning fixes everything, but with four games left in the regular season, there aren’t enough potential wins left to fix all that went wrong with USC’s 2025-26 season.

The win on Saturday ensured the Gamecocks, at the very least, won’t finish worse than last season.

USC’s win against the Bulldogs is its third SEC win of the year, officially beating out last year’s 2-16 conference record. It’s also a somewhat significant win for Paris as an individual, as it prevents him from finishing a third season at USC with 20 or more regular-season losses.

ESPN’s Basketball Power Index currently predicts USC to lose all four of its remaining regular-season games. If the Gamecocks lose out, their 2025-26 SEC record will go down as the third-worst under Paris (USC went 4-14 in 2022-23).

“It’s a beautiful thing, honestly, because we’ve been a lot of winnable games ... just couldn’t find ways to finish. So today was big for us, big for our confidence,” USC forward Elijah Strong said. “We could be a really, really, really good team to close out this season, and pull off some really big wins. And we’re very confident in that.”

South Carolina men’s basketball remaining schedule

• Tuesday: vs. Kentucky, 7 p.m. (SEC Network)
• Saturday, Feb. 28: at Georgia, 3:30 p.m. (SEC Network)
• Tuesday, March 3: vs. Tennessee, 6 p.m. (SEC Network)
• Saturday, March 7: at Ole Miss, 1 p.m. (SEC Network)

This story was originally published February 21, 2026 at 3:18 PM with the headline "South Carolina basketball beats Mississippi St., ends 7-game skid. What we learned."