FAYETTEVILLE - Arkansas senior center Steven Hill took only high-percentage shots and most all of them resulted in points, but his best offensive effort of the season still wasn't enough to change the outcome.

Despite Hill's offensive face-lift, Arkansas was unable to fend off South Carolina and lost a 70-66 decision in front of 17,883 in Bud Walton Arena on Wednesday night.

"Obviously, you never want to lose at home," Hill said. "You have to give South Carolina a lot credit, they played really well.

"We just didn't get the job done."

Hill did his part, particularly in the first half. He was 6 of 6 from the floor and scored 12, and all of his shots were either layups or dunks.

Hill connected on 6 of 9 shots and finished with 15 points, one shy of a career high. It was the most he's scored in a game all season. His previous season high was only 9 against College of Charleston on Nov. 15.

"For me, personally, it was an easy half of scoring," Hill said. "Mostly it was just dunks and layups and things like that. The guards did a tremendous job of getting the ball to me in spots where I could score easily.

"In the second half, defensively, they tried to pressure us a little more. At the same time we didn't handle it. Sometimes we would, sometimes we wouldn't.

"That's what cost us the ballgame."

Hill was one of three Razorbacks in double figures. Sonny Weems had 28 and Charles Thomas had 11. At one point in the first half, Hill scored eight straight points.

"Steven is always making contributions for us," Weems said. "He can be a great scorer. Tonight, it was a mismatch thing. You know, we did our best to get him the ball inside in the post. I don't think we gave it to him as much as we needed to."

Razorbacks forward Charles Thomas agreed.

"We had some mismatches with him inside at times in the first half," Thomas said. "We had to go to the well as much as we could and Steven did the rest.

"We probably should have gone to the well even more."