How to watch and what to watch for: South Carolina looks to stay hot against Notre Dame in ACC-SEC Challenge

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After a week-long break, South Carolina men’s basketball is back in action. The Gamecocks will take on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the ACC-SEC Challenge on Tuesday night.

South Carolina is riding high, off to its first 5-0 start since the 2016-17 season. It took down both DePaul and Grand Canyon to win the first-ever Arizona Tip-Off Tournament.

Tip-off is set for 7 p.m. at Colonial Life Arena. The game can be seen on SEC Network. But it will also be available for streaming on Fubo TV.

Here’s what to watch for on Tuesday.

How will this group look after a long layoff?

For the first time this year, we might get a real indication of what this team could look like. Yes, they’ve played in some tight knit games, but what can they do after so much time off? After all, they didn’t play a game during Thanksgiving break.

Maybe they’ll look like normal and this section will mean nothing. But it’s just something to think about. It would seem Lamont Paris has the pieces in place to be fine in this type of game.

Continue to limit turnovers and hit free throws

South Carolina looked sloppy against DePaul, especially in the second half of that game. A big part of those struggles came down to throwing the ball all over the place and not making free throws. The Gamecocks missed 14 free throws and had 17 turnovers. They were lucky to have won that night.

But South Carolina did a much better job of fixing the mistakes it had made before. The Gamecocks went 14-for-16 at the free throw line and had 10 turnovers. On the surface, you might look at the No. 10 and think that’s not good. To be fair, it’s not great. However, most of them came early in Sunday’s game when they played sloppy and tried to do too much.

Now, the Gamecocks will have to continue to play efficiently. Slow the game down, don’t try to do too much, too quick. Let Notre Dame be the team to make mistakes.

Zachary Davis might be heating up

To start this year, Davis has come off the bench and got off to a slow start. But when the team was in Arizona, he looked a lot better out there.

Davis combined for 15 points on 5-of-10 shooting in two games. He went 3-for-5 from three-point land. At some point, if Paris feels the need to make a change in the starting five, which should be the same on Tuesday, he could be the guy to slide in.

Can South Carolina keep shooting well?

In its last game, South Carolina shot 54 percent from the field on 27-for-50 shooting. That’s really good. It will win most of the time if it shoots like that.

But can the Gamecocks keep it rolling? When one guy goes cold, can everyone pick up the slack? It seems that might be the case. They’ve done a great job of doing so this year. Even the guys off the bench like Davis and Jacobi Wright have done their part.

That’s really what makes this year’s team so much different than last year’s. Everyone does their part and it’s not a one-man show. So far, they’ve been really successful with this mindset.

Scouting the opponent

Notre Dame hasn’t been super impressive so far this season. The Irish won their season opener against Niagara then lost two straight, including a blowout loss to Auburn in Brooklyn. But they’ve responded with two straight wins over Oklahoma State and Maryland-Eastern.

Head coach Micah Shrewsberry is in his first year with the program. He previously coached at Penn State for three years, where he led the Nittany Lions to the Round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament last year.

But this is still a team that has a lot of work to do. Notre Dame went 11-21 and were a first-round exit in the ACC Tournament last year. The Irish are ranked No. 170 in the KenPom College Basketball Ratings.

Markus Burton is far and away the best player on this squad. He’s averaging 18 points per game on 44.4 percent shooting. The freshman guard takes a lot of shots and can be a little hit or miss at times. For instance, he went 4-for-20 from the field against Auburn and had 12 points. Limit him and that goes a long way to victory.

There’s a big gap between Burton and the rest of the team. The next best scorer averages 8.8 points per game.