Martin 'disappointed' after wasting opportunity

Entering Saturday’s game against LSU, Frank Martin knew what kind of opportunity his team had.

Win, and the Gamecocks notch a Quad I win and inch closer to the field of 68. Lose, and making the tournament becomes infinitely harder.

As the buzzer sounded and South Carolina’s late push couldn’t get it over the hump, Martin understood what it meant to his team.

“It’s the first time all year I’ve been disappointed. We’ve lost some games early in the year. It stinks to lose but those were lessons we had to learn. Today I’m disappointed. We knew this was going to be a physical game. We knew this was a real good basketball game,” he said. “They came out where with a purpose. They didn’t come out today to just go through the motions. We had to be real good today and we weren’t.”

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The Gamecocks lost by six, 86-80, and now making the tournament becomes that much harder with just four games left to play.

Coming into the matchup, South Carolina sat as one of Joe Lunardi’s next four out of the tournament, meaning the Gamecocks were right on the cusp of making it into the field as Selection Sunday neared and needed wins to keep getting closer.

The LSU loss is a major setback but ultimately not the knockout blow with South Carolina having four regular season games left and the SEC Tournament left to play, and Martin knows that.

“Are they making the decision tomorrow?” he said. “We have at least five games left. Last time I checked, we’re not playing anybody with a bad NET or RPI or whatever. I’m disappointed. This would have been a great opportunity. If they were making the decision tomorrow, I’d go home and cry tonight. But they’re not making the decision tomorrow. They’re making the decision three weeks from now.”

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South Carolina has four games left with two opponents—at Alabama and Mississippi State—both in the NET top 50.

They’ll also play a Georgia team inside the top 100 and a Vanderbilt team near 150 in the NET as well. Their next game is Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. against Georgia and will need every win they can get over the next two weeks after dropping both games this week.

“We have to go win the next game on the schedule. Let’s say we found a way to hit two more threes and win by one,” Martin said. “You think I would be in a celebratory mood because tomorrow morning they say we’re in the tournament? No, I’d still be a miserable SOB. That’s the way I live at this time of the year. The end of the day, we have to go beat Georgia, period; end of story. We don’t need to worry about anything else. Georgia, go win, that’s it. What you can’t overcome at this time of year are losing streaks.”

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The Gamecocks (16-11, 8-6 SEC) will say all the right things after the loss about taking it game by game and sticking to the game plan but will need more wins than losses down the stretch to feel good about a tournament or NIT berth.

What’s gone wrong over this two-game losing streak was the defense as the Gamecocks allowed a combined 165 points over their last two games.

They didn’t have much time to prepare for the LSU game, getting back at 3 a.m. Thursday and having essentially one day to prepare for the Tigers, Martin said.

“I trusted in the fact over the last three months we’ve become the best defensive team in the SEC but I didn’t’ feel comfortable because we were so bad against Mississippi State defensively,” he said. “When I’m not comfortable with what we’re doing, I fix it in practice. I don’t fix it in games. I didn’t have the practice time to be able to address the things we’re not doing well right now.”