Oregon's Jermaine Couisnard beats former team with 40-point game - ESPN

PITTSBURGH — As the ball splashed through the bottom of the net in the first half of No. 11 Oregon's first-round meeting with No. 6 South Carolina, Jermaine Couisnard heard Jacobi Wright, his former teammate, start celebrating.

«It's cash,» Wright said, according to Couisnard, as Wright's bucket gave the Gamecocks a three-point lead with 9:01 to go in the half Thursday.

Couisnard, who spent the first four years of his career at South Carolina before transferring to Oregon when coach Frank Martin was fired in 2022, was energized by Wright's trash talk. Two possessions later, Couisnard hit his first 3-pointer. Thirty seconds after that, he added another, this one on a fast break off a South Carolina turnover.

«That's what got me going,» Couisnard said. «I'm a competitor, and that's like a guy that I kind of mentored when I was there. Once he hit a 3 and he got to talking… but it was fun, man. Those guys kind of made me. I grew a lot. I learned a lot when I was there. So I appreciate those guys more than anything.»

Couisnard finished the Ducks' 87-73 win with 40 points, setting a record for points scored by an Oregon player in an NCAA tournament game and also at PPG Paints Arena. He also scored the most points by a Pac-12 player in an NCAA tournament game since Bill Walton poured in 44 in the 1973 national championship.

«He was really feeling it,» said Oregon coach Dana Altman, who moves to 8-0 in first-round games with the Ducks. «He had a couple 3s that were tough, and I think that really got him going. He got in the paint and finished some tough shots. He just had it going. Those are games every player dreams of, you know, getting it going and getting it going in the NCAA tournament is a really good feeling.

»It was a