Frank Martin understands his team, as it sits, still has a lot of work to if it wants to get into the NCAA Tournament.
But, as the Gamecocks sit four games away from ending the regular season, he doesn’t feel like he’s in the same spot as the team was last year.
“We’ve got real good games in front of us against SEC-caliber teams. If you don’t have quality wins at this time of year, yes that loss would have been a detriment to our possibilities,” Martin said. “We have enough quality wins. We just need to win games. That’s what we need to do. We’re not in a place like the last two years we haven’t had quality non-conference wins. You get an opportunity against a top-25 team like LSU you have to go win that at this time of year. This year, we have those kinds of wins.”
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South Carolina is fresh off a six-point loss to LSU Saturday, which dropped them to 8-6 in the conference. It wasn’t a huge hit to the team’s tournament placement in the eyes of Joe Lunardi, who still has this team in his “Next Four Out” as of Monday afternoon.
To Martin’s point the Gamecocks are 4-7 against Quad I teams with three of the four wins coming on the road. They also have a winning record against the other three quads with a loss to Quad III Boston and Quad IV Stetson.
Right now the Gamecocks (16-11, 8-6 SEC) are in the projected NIT field as a No. 3-seed by DRatings. For Martin, he’s not concerned with the bubble talk right now with his team’s sole focus winning as many games as possible down the stretch to look more attractive to the selection committee.
“What we can’t afford this time of year is a losing streak. We have to negate that,” he said. “We’ve got enough. Because we do have a couple losses where you’re like eh we can’t afford to have a losing streak right now. It’s hard to overcome that. We have enough quality wins: road wins, who we’ve beaten, where we’ve beaten them. We just have to pile up more wins coming down the stretch.”
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The Gamecocks have a few more opportunities to earn solid wins in the regular season with four games remaining: home games against Georgia and Mississippi State and road tilts against Alabama and Vanderbilt.
If they win those, as the NET rankings stand Monday, those would give them one Quad I win (Alabama), a Quad II win (Mississippi State) and two Quad III wins (Vanderbilt and Georgia).
South Carolina is currently No. 63 in the NET with a 63rd overall strength of schedule.
“This league’s really good. Top to bottom, it’s really good. It’s easy to look at a team’s record and say they stink. I get it, and everyone always uses the Bill Parcells quote where you are what your record says you are. That’s a little deceiving in this league from the losing standpoint. This league has no bottom. It’s really, really difficult,” Martin said. “Every game it’s down to a play or call.”
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The Gamecocks start the trek to trying to get into the Field of 68 Wednesday night hosting Georgia at 6:30 p.m. before hitting to road to Tuscaloosa Saturday night against the Tide.
The message to the team now isn’t about going out and winning the next four games. It’s about beating the Bulldogs and going from there.
“We’re in a good place. We’ve won games. I think this team has shown unbelievable growth—again I might add—from who we were in November to who we are now,” Martin said. “We have four more to play. We’re in a good place. We have to win a game…we have to figure out a way to beat Georgia. That’s it. Then you figure out a way to win the next game.”
