After not playing for over a month, the Gamecocks are getting ready to play their second game in five days and it's time to kickstart conference play.

South Carolina welcomes in Texas A&M for a late night tipoff at Colonial Life Arena to start what is right now a 17-game conference schedule.

Frank Martin and his team always take things one game at a time, but we can take a holistic look at the schedule and what the Gamecocks have coming down the pipe.

Right now the Gamecocks are No. 69 in KenPom, which is just seven spots lower than where South Carolina was in the initial rankings before the season started.

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As it stands right now, the Gamecocks sit at 2-2 and are projected by KenPom to go 7-10 in SEC play right now, which would mean a 9-12 finish to a pandemic-shortened season. That assumes the postponed Kentucky game does not get made up.

Typically, though, the Gamecocks outperform preseason predictions once they hit conference play but that's usually with double-digit non-conference games under their belts.

All but one game on the conference schedule currently, at Vanderbilt, is against teams ranked inside the KenPom top 100 with 10 against teams in the top 50: two games apiece against Ole Miss, Tennessee and Missouri with single games against Florida, Alabama, LSU and Arkansas.

The average KenPom ranking of the teams left on South Carolina's schedule is 54.8.

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South Carolina also debuted at No. 103 in the inaugural NET rankings this week and will have a chance to notch a Quad III win Wednesday night against Texas A&M, which sits at 101 in the NET as of Wednesday morning.

Right now South Carolina is 0-1 against Quad I teams (Houston), 1-1 in Quad II matchups (Liberty and Tulsa) and won its only game against a Quad IV team in Florida A&M.

Things could change as more games are played but the Gamecocks have eight matchups against Quad I opponents remaining, five against Quad II teams, three Quad III games and one more Quad IV teams.

The average NET ranking of the remaining opponents is 58.3 and the average quad of the remaining opponents averages out to 1.8.

South Carolina is fresh off a 78-71 win over Florida A&M Saturday and hosts Texas A&M at 9 p.m. on ESPNU to kick off SEC play.

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The Gamecocks played with eight scholarship players and could get more back against the Aggies. Frank Martin said Tuesday he's somewhat confident Jalyn McCreary could return to play Wednesday.

Alanzo Frink, Keyshawn Bryant and TJ Moss were the other scholarship players who missed the Florida A&M game. Walk-on Nathan Nelson also missed the game.