SOUTH CAROLINA GAMECOCKS BASKETBALL

Ask any of the 13 other SEC coaches about what a Frank Martin team does well and their answer doesn’t take long to formulate: Martin’s teams always defend and rebound well and are always dominant in the paint.

But, this year has been a different and learning experience for what right now has been an uncharacteristic year for Martin as his team tries to develop its identity.

“That’s our challenge right now as a team is to develop any kind of identity. I don’t think we have one on offense or defense,” Frank Martin said. “I asked the team over the weekend, ‘every time we play, what are we good at?’ they couldn’t answer me. I said, ‘that’s my frustration.’ There’s not something that where every time we play, we can say that’s what we’re good at.”

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South Carolina (4-5) is currently 163rd nationally in offensive efficiency averaging 103.5 points per 100 possessions and are 132nd in offensive rebounding percentage, which is significantly down from where they’ve finished in recent years, not finishing outside of the top 50 since 2015.

One of the biggest challenges in finding an identity so far is having so many freshmen having to log significant minutes while still trying to learn Martin’s system.

They’ll have to learn it quick preparing to play Virginia, which is fourth nationally in defensive efficiency.

“We got to be better offensively at understanding spacing. That’s the biggest challenge with freshmen,” “They’re used to playing with the ball in their hands and saying, ‘just let me go do my thing;’ then everyone’s in the wrong place. If you do that against Virginia, just give them the ball and let them do their thing, Virginia going to score 60 and you’re going to score 26.”

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The Gamecocks have three freshmen—AJ Lawson, TJ Moss and Keyshawn Bryant—already in the starting lineup with Alanzo Frink working his way into more playing time coming off a knee injury.

Because of that the team is still trying to find out what each player brings to the table on either side of the ball with some of the freshmen still learning the finer points it takes to succeed at this level.

Right now the Gamecocks are shooting 31.7 percent from three and just 48.7 percent from inside the arc.

“As a freshman, all you want to do is come and play. You don’t really mind the little things like screening, cutting the right way, rebounding. Those are the things we need to start doing to give an identity to our team,” Chris Silva said. “I think we need to start doing it and we’ll be fine.”

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Martin compares it some to last year’s team that was inconsistent to start the year but ultimately adopted graduate transfer Frank Booker’s personality.

Finding what this team is good at can take some time as the freshmen continue to develop and settle down, but as the Gamecocks enter the break between semesters finding their style of play is high on the priority list.

“That’s our challenge right now as a whole. Not just on offense, but as a team, we have to find what we’re going to do every single time we go out there that we can say, ‘that’s who we are,”’ Martin said. “We’re still trying to find personality on this team. It’s important that we keep pushing and eventually creating that personality.”