The Gamecocks are hopefully just a few days away from returning to the court after a nearly two-week pause on basketball activities.

Frank Martin said on his weekly call-in show the Gamecocks are shooting to return to the court Saturday with a lighter practice and a smaller group of players.

“There are eight guys who are able to perform at 50 percent of what a normal practice should be on Saturday,” Martin said. “That’s what we’re going to do on Saturday. For anyone sitting around sitting, ‘Well, if they’re healthy enough to practice why can’t we play Clemson?’ We’re not allowed to go 100 percent. We can only do 50 percent of our normal workload with eight players.”

The eight players would be just over half of the 15-man roster, and wouldn’t be nearly enough to run a full practice even if the Gamecocks could go 100 percent.

The Gamecocks are six days away from their next scheduled game Dec. 23 against SC State, and Martin said he’s hopeful the Gamecocks will continue to ratchet things up and add more players to practice as the lead up to the game continues.

On Sunday, we can go a little bit more. On Monday is the first time we actually can go full-ball, here we go, we’re coming. We still wont have a full team Monday. I believe we’ll have nine guys on Monday; nine, maybe 10. As we move away from Monday, slowly but surely I hope to add people until we get back to a full team with 15.”

If South Carolina could play Dec. 23, it would be the first game played in almost 20 days.

The Gamecocks last played Dec. 5 against Houston and went on pause the following week and have had three games either canceled or postponed since then.

Games against Wofford (Dec. 10) and George Washington (Dec. 14) were canceled with the annual rivalry game against Clemson currently postponed with the schools hoping to reschedule it at some point.