Gamecock alums high on potential for 2020 hoops team

If there’s any former Gamecock who knows a thing or two about winning and good guard play it’s Devan Downey.

And when he looks at the talent level of South Carolina’s ball handlers entering this season he sees a lot of it.

Downey, who was back in town this weekend for a charity basketball event, spent some time talking about his career and his offseason but spoke some on this year’s Gamecock roster and said it has a chance to make some noise.

“Honestly man, I don’t want to put a lot of pressure on them. I think with the experience we have coming back on the perimeter, this has a chance to be one of Frank’s better groups,” Downey said. “I don’t want to put the Final Four pressure but it reminds me of Sindarius’s year with a bunch of veteran guards. Any time you have great guard playing the SEC you have a chance.”

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Downey was a three-time All-SEC guard, two-time All-Defensive team honoree in three years at South Carolina, averaging 20.2 points and 4.5 assists during his career and was a driving force in the program’s upset over No. 1 Kentucky in 2010.

He said he talks with head coach Frank Martin regularly and keeps tabs on the players and the program, which means he knows exactly what the Gamecocks are returning next season.

The answer is a lot.

The Gamecocks only lost two big minute-getters—Maik Kotsar and Jair Bolden—off an 18-win team and are returning almost 74 percent of their minutes played, and over 70 percent of their points, rebounds, assists and blocks.

They return four starters—AJ Lawson, Jermaine Couisnard, Keyshawn Bryant and Justin Minaya—who have a combined 177 starts under their belt.

Sindarius Thornwell, who’s playing on the same team as Downey this weekend, actually stopped by the office this week to visit with Martin and watch a little bit of the Gamecocks’ workouts.

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“I think they look good, man. If those young bigs can catch up to those guards and those guards can lead, the talent is there,” Thornwell said. “If those guards can lead and get everyone to fall into place with what coach is asking of them, I think they have a real good chance to be special this year and in the year’s to come.”

Thornwell is one of the best players to ever come through the program, winning SEC Player of the Year as a senior and leading the Gamecocks to the Final Four.

He hasn’t played with anyone on the current roster but got to know a lot of them through his visits back to campus to the SC ProAm to playing pickup during the summer.

One guy who’s jumped off the page with him is redshirt sophomore Jermaine Couisnard, whose competitive juices remind Thornwell a lot of himself.

Couisnard put up eerily similar stats in his first year compared to Thornwell as a freshman and was named to the SEC All-Freshman team.

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“He’s good. That’s my boy. I told you when he wasn’t playing. Y’all can pull the interview up when he was redshirting and I told y’all probably the best player was redshirting. He came out and he was a competitor. I don’t go of talent or what you can do. I go off competing and heart. He goes out and attack guys,” Thornwell said.

“When him and me play each other, he plays me like it’s two grown men. That right there is what takes you a long way. It’s not your skill. Once you get to a certain level, everyone has that. It’s your heart that’s going to take you over the edge. He has that heart and it’s going to put him over the edge.”