SOUTH CAROLINA GAMECOCKS BASKETBALL

When Maik Kotsar was asked about his New Year’s Resolution, he didn’t skip a beat and responded with three simple words: “make the tournament.”

It’s all the Gamecocks want to do after getting there in 2017 and making it to the Final Four, and would be a storybook bookend to Kotsar’s career.

And if the Gamecocks are going to do it, the last two weeks will be a big reason why. South Carolina notched two big wins—culminating in a road upset over No. 9 Virginia—to boost a resume lacking a big win until then.

They did it in part because of offense, but as Frank Martin watched the film, he saw a defense slowly and surely coming together.

“As the second half was unfolding, we didn’t shoot it great,” he said. “We started missing shots again. What we didn’t do was allow our feelings to get impacted by missing shots. We continued to defend and rebound the basketball. We got to 42 and then we hit a dry spell. We really couldn’t score for a while. We were getting good shots but weren’t scoring. Defensively, we never caved.”

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The Gamecocks held Virginia to 59 points on 44 percent shooting with Kotsar unequivocally saying that was by far the team’s best defensive performance of the season to date.

Offensively, they hit 54.2 percent of their shots in the second half but went through a few dry spells but weathered the storm because of how good the defense was.

“The biggest difference was the fact that defensive we kept our focus and our enthusiasm and disciplines you have to have to beat anybody and more so to beat Virginia on the road,” Martin said.

Now the next step is sustaining it, and the stats from the last few games shows the defense is rounding into form.

Over their last five games, the Gamecocks are 4-1 and holding opponents to just 66.8 points per game. Other teams are shooting 39.8 percent—33.3 percent from three—against the Gamecocks and averaging 15.8 turnovers per game.

In their last two games, wins over Clemson and Virginia, the Gamecocks are giving up 56.5 points per game with teams shooting 35.2 percent from the field and just 30 percent from three. They’ve forced 40 turnovers over the last two games.

It all came to a head last week against the Cavs.

“The Virginia game showed that if we play defense as a team we can stop pretty much anyone. Virginia offense was really calm and they were looking for us to make a mistake so they could score,” Kotsar said. “We held our ground. I feel like we can carry that on to other games.”

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They’re now 81st nationally in defensive efficiency and have moved up almost 60 points in the NET rankings over the last two weeks.

Now is keeping it consistent as they get into SEC play as the finish up non-conference play Monday against Stetson (3 p.m., SEC Network).

“Just the togetherness of how we’re helping each other out,” Kotsar said. “Whenever one guy made a mistake, the other was there to correct it and we got straight back. We didn’t get caught in rotations.”