SOUTH CAROLINA GAMECOCKS BASKETBALL

Frank Martin understood a change was in order.

The Gamecocks were slumping and needed to fix an offense and get more players involved if his team was going to reach its full potential.

So, when he inserted Keyshawn Bryant into the lineup against Clemson, the offensive philosophy changed as well.

“I’m playing more perimeter guys, instead of doing a three-out, two-in, we’re going to a four-out, one-in. The floor spacing is different,” Martin said. “You have to teach different cuts, different angles, different reads. I think we’ve gotten better. I really do. I think that fits this team a lot better than the stuff we were doing when the season started.”

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The offense relies heavily on the Gamecocks playing small, putting essentially two guards, two wings and a big on the floor at the same time.

Instead of the traditional offense Martin usually plays with two bigs in the post and the perimeter players driving on the outside, there are four perimeter players who can theoretically shoot outside and just one post player.

Because of that, the opposing defense has to extend further out to the three-point line with more shooters on the floor, which can open up lanes to drive and opportunities for a big—whether that’s Maik Kotsar or Jalyn McCreary or Wildens Leveque—to clean up on the offensive glass.

“I think it’s going pretty good,” Justin Minaya said. “The way we tweaked it is it’s a little more spread out so he’s giving us more room to drive the ball and more opportunities for backside rebounding.”

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They’ve played a starting lineup consisting of either Jair Bolden or Jermaine Couisnard (who made his first-career start in an 81-78 win over Kentucky), AJ Lawson, Bryant, Minaya and Kotsar.

It’s a simplification of what they’ve tried to do for seven years previously mainly because this team is still young and have a different makeup compared to the majority of teams Martin’s put together.

Simplifying gives Martin the opportunity to play his two freshmen bigs a little more in McCreary and Leveque, taking some pressure off Kotsar to do everything down low.

It’s worked with McCreary piecing together arguably his most effective game Wednesday in the upset win, going 3-for-4 from the field with six points and three rebounds in 12 minutes.

“One of the reasons I tried to change what we’re doing offensively is to simplify things for him so he can be better for us. I think he’s going to keep getting better,” Martin said. “He’s completely bought in. he’s playing in practice with an aggression. He’s going after that ball. We have to keep him on the court.”

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It’s been a largely up and down stretch offensively for them with the Gamecocks beating Clemson and then-No. 9 Virginia while averaging 68.5 points before losing their next three games not scoring more than 68 in a game.

Despite a few close losses and a “stinker” against Stetson, Martin still liked the tweaks he made to the offense and liked what he saw from his team.

Playing without starting point guard Jermaine Couisnard, the Gamecocks lost to Florida by 13 after being close at the Under-4 timeout and with Couisnard lost a close one at Tennessee by a point.

They’d respond after with a win over No. 10 Kentucky, scoring 56 points in the second half and finishing with an offensive efficiency of 106, their highest in SEC play.

“Outside of that Stetson game, which that was an embarrassment, we’ve played pretty good for a while,” Martin said. “I don’t like excuses, especially after a loss. Jermaine’s becoming the heartbeat of our team and not having him in that Florida game really, really hurt us. At Tennessee we played hard enough and well enough to win but couldn’t score.”