Gamecocks positioned as 11-seed in the SEC tournament

The South Carolina basketball team seems to change things at the SEC tournament.

The South Carolina basketball team ended a disappointing 2021 regular season with a 28 point loss to Kentucky on Saturday. That loss lowered Gamecocks to 6-14 in the year, with a 4-12 mark in conference games.

These four SEC wins have ranked South Carolina as the tournament’s 11th seed, meaning they will face sixth-placed Ole Miss Rebels on Thursday night. The 12th place in the conference is the worst of the Gamecocks since the 2013-14 season. South Carolina only won 11th place in the tournament due to Auburn’s self-imposed post-season ban in 2020-21.

In the year, South Carolina allowed the league’s worst mark of 79.3 points per game, driven by an opponent’s three-point conversion rate of 36.9%, also the worst SEC mark. On the other hand, the Gamecock attack ended in eight points, 12th in the three-point shot and 13th in the free-throw line, resulting in the team’s defeat in eight of the last nine disputes.

Although the season did not go as planned, the team will try to start again at the SEC Tournament, and that first game features a rematch with Ole Miss, who defeated Gamecocks 81-74 earlier in the year. In that game, Columbia native Devontae Shuler lit up South Carolina’s defense with 31 points, the best of his career. Frank Martin’s group will have to improve things if they want to see a different result on Thursday.

South Carolina has had some success in the SEC tournament against the rebels in recent years, having defeated Ole Miss’s squads in 2015 and 2018 with 11 seed in both fights. They will try to extend this winning streak after the season to three games, while the Gamecocks try to keep their season alive for at least one more game.