KNOXVILLE - Tennessee gave up 14 3-pointers Wednesday night.
South Carolina held Grant Williams, the Southeastern Conference's leading scorer this season and the league's 2018 men's basketball player of the year, in check.
And it still didn't matter.
The top-ranked Volunteers had five scorers in double figures and led by double digits for more than 28 minutes in an 85-73 victory over the Gamecocks in front of 19,407 at Thompson-Boling Arena, Tennessee's 19th consecutive win.
The Vols (23-1, 11-0 Southeastern Conference) will try to extend their program-record winning streak Saturday night at No. 5 Kentucky (20-4, 9-2), which is coming off Tuesday's 73-71 loss to No. 19 LSU (20-4, 10-1). After that, Tennessee hosts Vanderbilt next Tuesday before visiting LSU on Feb. 23.
After Wednesday's game, South Carolina coach Frank Martin said his team made a concerted effort to limit Williams' production. The 6-foot-7 junior had 23 points and nine rebounds when Tennessee won 92-70 at South Carolina on Jan. 29. The Gamecocks (12-12, 7-4) met that objective, limiting Williams to eight points on 4-for-8 shooting this time, but he responded with a team-leading seven assists and grabbed nine rebounds.
Admiral Schofield scored a game-leading 21 points and added a team-best 10 rebounds. Jordan Bowden scored 16 points on 4-for-6 shooting from 3-point range, while Kyle Alexander, Jordan Bone and Lamonte Turner had 10 each. Bone had six assists, while Turner had four.
Tennessee shot 49 percent from the field and made nine 3-pointers.
"We have so many pieces," Schofield said. "We have 11, 12 starters that can come out and compete at a high level. You watch us play and it seems like we just score at will sometimes because that's what we do, that's what we work on. When we do that, we create opportunities for our shooters to get open 3s, and we can really shoot the ball.
"The biggest thing is keeping it in our head and not letting teams run us out of what we do. We'll get the ball inside and live and die by it."
Defensively, the Vols held the Gamecocks in check - from inside the 3-point line. The visitors made just 12 of their 40 shots for two points, but they sank 14 of their 23 attempts outside the arc, with the long-range makes South Carolina's season high and the most allowed by Tennessee in a game this season.
Tre Campbell was 5-for-5 from long range as he scored 19 points to lead the Gamecocks, Chris Silva had 17 points to go with 15 rebounds and Hassani Gravett scored 15 points.
"I do think we're balanced," Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said, "but a lot of it has to do with the fast pace of the game. They (South Carolina) scored a lot of baskets early in transition. They shot the ball well. There was a lot of possessions in the game. You look at Grant's (lack of) points, but he was responsible for a lot of them. He had seven assists. When you put him and (Chris) Silva in there, that's a tough front line we dealt with.
"I thought Grant, other than the last play of him coming off the floor, he actually told me 'I should have made a pass on that last shot.' I think that when he keeps that mindset, we'll be fine."
The Vols used a 19-3 run to assume control of the game in the first half, building an 18-point lead before taking a 49-36 advantage into the locker room at the break. The Gamecocks, who had averaged 6.9 3-pointers per game this season entering Wednesday, made seven 3s in each half, but they never were able to get closer than 12 points within the lead after the Vols' initial first-half onslaught.
With Tennessee winning this season's first contest against South Carolina in lopsided fashion and the Kentucky showdown coming up, it would have been easy for the Vols to overlook the Gamecocks.
Alexander said that wasn't going to be the case.
"We have a lot of discussions as a team with the coaches in the film room," he said. "One of the ones that sticks out is focusing on what's in front of you. You can't be focused on any of the outside noise. That's what's helped us out this year. We're a team that's experiencing this together for the first time.
"We're an experienced team, but we've only been to the NCAA tournament once, so all this stuff is new to us, so we're taking it step by step, game by game."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.