COLOMBIA – The greatest moment in the program’s history was the result of five years of construction. When the South Carolina men’s basketball team crashed in the 2017 Final Four, it was because Frank Martin patiently nudged, nudged and pulled Gamecocks out of the mess he inherited.
No realistic fans expected another Final Four the following year, not after the Gamecocks lost 75 percent of their score and many of the players who took them there. It would take time to build again.
But four years have passed and the building is on unstable ground. Nobody wants to hear Martin criticize his team’s lack of leadership and identity, even when the Gamecocks were hit harder by COVID-19 than any other team in America, but that’s where USC sits after a 109- 86 for Auburn on Saturday. Gamecocks are 3-5 and the NCAA Tournament is as far away as it was during Martin’s first three seasons at USC.
The tournament is the goal of all teams and the judgment line of the Power-5 teams. There are reasons, not excuses, for Martin’s teams to have reached just one in their previous eight seasons at USC.
Still, this season, even in the year of COVID, is creating uncomfortable questions. Especially when Martin himself is responding.
“What is confusing about this team is that we have a lot of guys who have been through this. We shouldn’t have rewound to start from scratch again, ”he said. “When a coach is trying to build an identity on a team, you have zero chances of winning games. Zero.”
It is definitely not a confidence booster, as the USC tries to break a three-game losing streak against Georgia on Wednesday. Gunner AJ Lawson also did not confirm what he looked like against Auburn.
“In terms of effort, we didn’t give as much as we received,” said Lawson.
COVID definitely had an effect. The three breaks that Gamecocks had cost them seven games and limited them to six practices for seven weeks. There simply wasn’t enough time to install all of Martin’s defensive principles, nor find out what this team is best at and create game plans around it.
The USC has achieved a complete preseason practice, but they are used to shake off off-season rust, condition themselves and then can fine-tune throughout the season. The Gamecocks played three games, then stopped, which undermined their conditioning. So when they came back, they were missing out on important players (Keyshawn Bryant, Alanzo Frink, Jalyn McCreary) and had to readjust to make up for those absences.
Bryant came back and it was wonderful. McCreary returned to a game on January 6 against Texas A&M, has been absent since, but is expected to play on Wednesday. Frink, who has not played since December 5, was announced on Tuesday that he would be out of the game for the rest of the year for medical reasons.
“We didn’t have time to become who we need to be as a team, and I as a coach, I didn’t have a chance to break bad habits with practice,” said Martin, whose second fight with COVID left him lethargic and without his usual energy in practice. . “It’s like an AAU ball now, which we are trying to do.”
Gamecocks will never have the unique talents to work as freelancers on the court and try to outdo their opponents, as AAU teams do. His previous identity was built on defense and resistance.
These are problems that can be solved with complete periods of training and games, not eight games until the end of January, when all the other major conference teams in the country, except DePaul, have played at least 10 games.
“If I’m tough on them, everyone wants to know why Frank is so bad and so bad and such a bad human being. All of you who read chat rooms, this is what you will read if I have to go back to what I tried to do when I got here, fix this program that had no identity. And now, we are a team with no identity, ”said Martin. “At the moment, we have no leadership. We are simply there. In life, there is nothing worse than just being there. “
The Gamecocks are there. They have 14 games left to show why Martin was so excited about this team before COVID arrived, and to prove that they just stopped construction, they didn’t demolish the building.
Follow David Cloninger on Twitter @DCPandC.