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An exciting, uptempo, tenacious playing fullcourt style of team basketball is what Tim Carter promised South Carolina State fans upon his hiring.
On Monday, the new Bulldogs' head men's basketball coach displayed his new product for the first time publicly against an outside opponent. Before a near-capacity audience at the Smith-Hammond-Middleton Memorial Center, SCSU put forth a strong showing in an 85-65 exhibition win over crosstown foe Voorhees College.
Chris Miller-Williams scored 19 points and Jason Johnson and Jason Flagler each added 10 points for the Bulldogs, who led as many as 26 points. SCSU shot 50 percent from the field, while combining to dish out 15 assists as a team in making a constant effort to share the basketball.
Constantly substituting players in and out of the lineup, Carter kept a fresh lineup on the floor. This allowed the Bulldogs maintain a frenetic pace in incessantly looking for transition points and playing .jpgling defense in holding the Tigers to 32.9 percent field-goal shooting.
Antonio Bolton finished with 18 points and Rudy Smith had 13 for the Tigers, whose head coach Andre Williams did not stay around at the final buzzer. With 3:16 remaining, he was ejected after picking up two technical fouls.
Afterwards, Carter was pleased overall with his team's effort but indicated they were still a work in progress.
"We definitely want to push the basketball," he said. "We definitely want to get high-percentage shots in transitions. I thought tonight we got some good looks before we tried to do that, but it was still pretty ragged. It was very ragged tonight and they made us looked like that by the way they played. But we're going to try to push it. You've got to defend. You've got to rebound, you've got to defense before you ever start running the basketball. I thought defensively our effort was good until the final part of the game."
From a defensive standpoint, Carter had to pleased with his team's intensity and hustle. The Bulldogs held the Tigers to 8-33 shooting and forced 15 turnovers in taking a 37-21 halftime lead.
Everett Pace led all scorers with eight first-half points, but it was not enough to pick up the slack for Bolton who struggled from the field. The NAIA All-American was just 7-19 from the field and committed four turnovers.
At one point, SCSU held Voorhees scoreless for 4 ý minutes in stretching their lead as many as 17 points in the first half. Johnson provided a defensive presence in the paint with three of SCSU's eight blocked shots to go with he and Derrick Davis' team-high seven first-half points.
The Bulldogs kept up the high tempo following halftime in setting up scoring opportunities inside for Miller-Williams, who had 14 in the second half. Guards Jessie Burton and Carrio Bennett also began to connect from the outside for the Bulldogs, while most of the Tigers' points came mostly on one-on-one drives or off SCSU turnovers.
Despite its size advantage, SCSU only outrebounded Voorhees 46-43. When asked how the Bulldogs will hold its own under the boards Friday night against a taller University of South Carolina squad, Carter simply said one word - EFFORT.
"That's all you tell your guys to do - you've got to give good effort," he said. "We're going to play some big people from now on and the only way you compensate for size is playing with heart and effort and that's all we're going to emphasize this year - just playing hard and doing the best you can."