“Confidence for Russell,” replied Moody, Kansas University’s junior power forward who had four points, two boards and five fouls in the Jayhawks’ 64-60 victory. “He really stepped up. It’s got to help his confidence.”

Freshman backup point guard Russell Robinson — who scored four pivotal points in the final seconds — finished with seven points, two steals and an assist against three turnovers in 20 minutes.

Aside from Robinson’s clutch play and the fact KU managed a victory to improve to 7-0, there wasn’t much for the Jayhawks to boast about Saturday. The home team hit 41.7 percent of its shots and committed 20 turnovers.

“We know we’ve got to focus every game,” Moody said. “We can’t come out like this again. If we don’t match our opponent’s intensity, this can happen.”

The Jayhawks, who entered the game a 52-percent-shooting team, hit eight of 23 first-half shots, including three of 11 threes while committing 16 turnovers and trailed, 33-25, at the break. KU had just four turnovers the second half and hit 48 percent of its shots (just one of seven threes) in outscoring the Gamecocks, 39-27, the second 20 minutes.

“It’s nice to win a close game,” KU coach Bill Self said. “As good as they were and as poor as we were, we still made some plays when it counted to win the game.

“This team is a ways (away) of being a so-called excellent team. We do some good things in spurts.

“We don’t defensively rebound the ball at all. We’ve got guys playing soft, in my opinion,” Self said. “We’ve all got to step up and make plays when the game is on the line. We made enough plays to win.”

The team was frustrated on a night Moody fouled out, and Wayne Simien had four whistles.

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to comment. I thought I had a couple of blocks I didn’t get credit for,” Moody said with a smile. “The refs did a good job. Wayne was in at the end, and Keith was in at the end.”

Moody said a problem was the Jayhawks’ heads weren’t in it in the beginning, when athletic South Carolina came out in its fullcourt press and raced to an 11-0 lead.

“The first half was pretty ugly,” Moody said. “It wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen. It might have been lack of focus. It was in our heads how athletic they were. They played really well. They had intensity, and we didn’t match it. There were some mistakes that were hard to believe.”

One was freshman C.J. Giles’ depositing the ball in the wrong basket after grabbing a rebound of a missed free throw.

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“Coach told us (at halftime) we had to focus. He got on us pretty good,” Moody said.

Senior Langford said the Jayhawks would be able to handle opponents’ pressure in the future.

“Last year we wanted teams to pressure us. We thought it’d work in our favor,” Langford said. “Early on it might have been a little more challenging. The whole thing is, we kept telling each other we were going to win the game. We had confidence in ourselves the whole time.”

The Jayhawks next will meet Wisconsin-Milwaukee at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Kansas City’s Kemper Arena.

A major milestone could be reached in the game. Aaron Miles, who had eight assists Saturday, is just two assists shy of tying — three away from passing — Doug Gottlieb’s Big 12 Conference-record assist total of 793. Miles is 13 away from the school record of 804 set by Jacque Vaughn.