USC 85, Radford 56: The Spinella Show
Stephen Spinella scored the most points of his career on Tuesday night.
On Friday night, he not only did it again, but he outscored everybody else in the building for good measure.
Behind a 15-point effort from the sophomore guard, which led all scorers, South Carolina thrashed Radford 85-56 for its second win of the season.
“Stephen Spinella shot the ball well tonight,” USC coach Darrin Horn said.
Spinella scored 10 points in USC’s 82-73 loss at No. 2 Michigan State earlier in the week, which was the high-water mark of the Colts Neck, N.J., native’s career single-game point output for all of two days.
“I’m shooting in practice, and it’s just transferring over to the games now,” Spinella said.
Spinella, who prior to this week was best known for playing tough man-to-man defense on Kentucky guard John Wall during a stretch of USC’s 68-62 upset of the No. 1 Wildcats last season, was 6-of-7 from the field and 3-of-4 from three-point range – numbers USC expected when he committed prior to the 2009-2010 season.
“I think he’s playing with a lot of confidence, which is good,” Horn said. “He’s doing the things that when we recruited him, we thought he could do. We knew he was a good scorer, he’s athletic.”
Spinella’s struggles shooting last season as a freshman were no secret, and Horn and his staff have encouraged him to not focus on offense, but rather on his all-around game, in order to find success shooting.
So far, so good.
“The thing to me, as a coach, that was good tonight [is] when kids focus on offense, nothing else seems to go good. When we focus on doing team things, getting loose balls and getting to the glass and running the floor, it just seems like everything else goes better,” Horn said. “I thought he got himself going with the big offensive rebound, flying in from the wing. Some of those shots he made, to his credit, he knocked them down, which is great, but he ran the floor. Because he ran the floor, he was in a position to receive them.”
Horn’s summation of Spinella’s night was about the same as Spinella himself characterized it.
“Coach keeps telling me to be a player and to not just be a shooter,” Spinella said. “So I’m not really focusing on shooting the ball. I’m focusing on the little things like defense and rebounding.
“With that, shots are going to come and stuff’s going to fall into place for me.”
Spinella’s 15 points were part of a larger effort by the USC bench, which compiled 39 total points and gave Horn the flexibility to substitute at will when he felt it necessary throughout the night.
“Had a bunch of mass substitutions because I wasn’t pleased with what was going on,” Horn said. “It’s great to have a bench. I’m really enjoying that. I don’t know if everybody else is, but it’s saving my voice. I don’t have to scream and holler as much. I can just take them out. For some reason, the bench speaks more loudly than a coach does.”
There was one instance where many assumed Horn would make a substitution, but didn’t. After making his final basket of the night, a two-pointer which was initially thought a three-pointer, Spinella stuck his tongue out and started wagging it – an action many figured would garner some form of admonishment from the typically no-nonsense Horn.
That wasn’t the case though, as after the game Spinella said the show of expression didn’t anger Horn.
“He just looked at me with that sort of smile-grin,” Spinella said.
Three other Gamecocks joined Spinella with double-figures in scoring. Freshman guards Brian Richardson and Bruce Ellington had 11 and 10 points, respectively, while sophomore forward Lakeem Jackson also had 10.
USC (2-1) came out cold, hitting just three of its first 17 shots from the field in the first eight minutes. But, Radford (2-1) was equally unspectacular at the same time, allowing the Gamecocks to hold a slight lead, 10-6, with 11:47 remaining before halftime.
By the break, the lead was anything but slight – USC, powered by a 7- and two 12-0 runs, outscored the Highlanders 39-13 down the stretch to take a 49-19 lead, which ended up only a point off the eventual margin of victory.
