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KNOXVILLE -- Bruce Pearl never felt confident in his game plan for the Tennessee men's basketball team's game against South Carolina until Saturday around lunchtime.

Figuring out how to slow down Gamecocks senior guard Devan Downey, who leads the Southeastern Conference in scoring, must have been hard enough.

Pearl's biggest challenge, though, might have been coming up with a way to get UT's struggling offense on track.

“I was really concerned (Friday) night,” he said. “I wasn't sure that we had a game plan that was going to be effective, that I knew what our game plan was going to be, until I really delivered it (Saturday) to the kids in the early afternoon.”

Whatever it was, it worked.

The 14th-ranked Volunteers emerged from their midseason offensive swoon Saturday night with a 79-53 beatdown of South Carolina at Thompson-Boling Arena in one of their most impressive performances of the season.

Tennessee did almost everything well against the Gamecocks. Most importantly, the Vols scored their most points in nearly a month, led by a career-high 30 from senior center Wayne Chism.

For the first time in at least a couple of weeks -- really, since an 81-55 rout of Auburn on Jan. 14 -- they were able to feel good about how they played. Unlike their escape from Baton Rouge, La., with a 59-54 win over LSU less than 48 hours earlier, they put together a nearly complete game after a slow start.

Maybe it was only a matter of time before Tennessee's offense caught up with its stingy defense.

“We hadn't played good offense in five games, so the percentages say we've got to play good offense one of these next couple of games,” said walk-on junior forward Steven Pearl, who scored five points in 13 effective minutes.

“Our first couple of minutes were shaky. Once we got in the flow, guys started getting confidence in each other and we started getting confidence in ourselves, and we played a lot better offensively.”

Chism deserves most of the credit. He dominated like never before, knocking down 11 of his 17 field-goal attempts and going 6-of-8 from the free-throw line.

He carried UT in the second half, when he scored 19 of his points to help the Vols pull away to a lead that quickly swelled to 27 points.

“That's not too bad,” Chism said. “That's my first getting to 3-0. I always got stopped at 26. I finally got two more points out there, and then another two, and I was like, ‘Yes!' It was nice doing that.”

The week-long layoff since South Carolina's last game didn't seem to do much good.

The Gamecocks endured their lowest-scoring game of the year, shooting a season-low 27.6 percent, despite 26 points from the nearly unstoppable Downey. And they never found an answer for Chism, who slammed the door on South Carolina with a three-point play and 3-pointer on back-to-back possessions near the midway point of the second half.

“Chism outplayed us,” second-year South Carolina coach Darrin Horn said. “He had not finished like that all year long. He is a terrific player.”

Tennessee lost one player with the first-half exit of Cameron Tatum, who suffered an apparent right ankle injury when a South Carolina player trying to grab a rebound landed on his foot.

But the Vols also added another player back to the mix Saturday with the reinstatement of junior center Brian Williams following his Jan. 1 arrest.

He was the lone player involved in the traffic stop that ended Tyler Smith's UT career and prompted the suspensions of Tatum, Williams and Melvin Goins who remained in limbo.

“It's good to have Brian back,” Bruce Pearl said. “He was very, very grateful, very emotional about being back. We'll go from here. We want to continue to do positive things.”

Even with Williams' return, the Vols face a tough task. Their next two games, Tuesday at No. 18 Vanderbilt and Saturday at No. 4 Kentucky, likely will determine whether they can contend for another division title.

“If we're going to defend our SEC East championship,” Bruce Pearl said, “we're going to have to do something very special.”

At the very least, Saturday was a good start.

Ryan Callahan covers University of Tennessee men's basketball. Write to him at The Daily Times, P.O. Box 9740, Maryville, TN 37802, e-mail him at ryan.callahan@thedailytimes.com or follow him at Twitter.com/DTsportsRyan.