OSU rolls past South Carolina 79-52

BOX SCORE

Oklahoma State looked more like itself on Friday night agains South Carolina as Marcus Smart posted a very Marcus Smart-like 13-4-5-2 line en route to another over-by-the-eight-minute-timeout-in-the-first-half blowout in GIA. OSU held South Carolina to 15 points in the first half and cruised to its eighth win in nine tries, 79-52.

Smart wisely eschewed the hero ball antics he picked up in Florida and again accepted his role as the engine that powers one of the strongest machines in the country.

I’ll say this after every game OSU plays this year but this team is at its best (as it was tonight) when its perimeter defense creates 8-10 points of offense — tonight it felt more like 80-100. South Carolina was just hopeless on offense — that’s what this team can (and should) do to inferior opponents.

It got away from that in Orlando, Smart said as much in the Oklahoman today.

“It’s hard to teach [us to run our offense], especially when they’re going in. It’s like, ‘I’m making them, so why not keep shooting ’em?'”

That’s not this team’s identity — sure you’re going to have games when they’re falling but if it can translate the attacking offense and push-you-to-halfcourt defense it displayed against the Gamecocks on Friday, it won’t lose in GIA all season.

A few more thoughts…

• Spirit of Bedlam week: I watched the game and did the write-up at the house of my buddy, an OU fan, because our power was out all day. He wore an OU hoodie while we watched tonight but I got him to say some nice things about GIA. Markel impressed him, too. He tried to charge me for pulling Vines off his TV.

• Markel’s shoe game and Smart’s shoe game are pretty much completely the opposite (as Carson pointed out). Markel rocked the 11s tonight (perfection), Smart was in some team-issued all-orange kicks. I don’t mind them (like Phil Bennett in the yellow polo) but they don’t go that hard.

• Speaking of things not going that hard, Smart’s short sleeves under the jersey need to go somewhere other than on my television.

• All five starters for OSU scored in double figures. That’s awesome.

• South Carolina had four field goals in the first half and 13 turnovers. That’s not going to get it done in the SEC, Big 12, Sun Belt, or anywhere else.

• I love the students’ faces after this Nash dunk.

• It felt good to have Stevie back tonight. It’s weird that a freshman could change the dynamic of this team so much, and maybe he doesn’t — maybe tonight was just the difference between playing in GIA and not playing in GIA, but it sure is nice to have a built-in breather for 33.

• Lleyton Hammonds has a really pretty shot.

• This crushed me.

https://twitter.com/okc_dave/status/409156969333653505

• Every time I see South Carolina basketball all I think about is Richmond.

• Turnovers: OSU – 7, South Carolina – 24. Wow.

• Pistols would have been no mas if this had fallen.

• Robin Ventura was at the game tonight which begs the question: What’s the Jack Nicholson center-court seats hierarchy in GIA? Boone’s obviously No. 1 but where do we go from there? Eddie? Desmond? Mahan? Where does Bo Van Pelt fit in? What about John Farrell? Country? I need to give this some thought.

• I don’t want to be hyperbolic but I think this might have been Smart’s best dunk ever.

• My OU buddy wanted me to point out that the announcers were about as into the game as South Carolina was.

• Baylor beat the Fightin’ Frank Martins by two in Waco. How?

• Why did this team look so different on the four-game road trip? Does the Smart robot have an auto-hero ball mode switch that gets flipped when OSU gets tested or was that two-game stretch when he tried to score 65 a game just an anomaly? I have questions about this team on the road against good clubs. I won’t get my answers for a while.

Bedlam tomorrow, y’all.