The Gamecocks have their first coaching staff vacancy since 2017, which means Frank Martin is hitting the phones now trying to narrow down who he wants to talk with and who he might hire in the coming weeks.

And, by the way he talked Monday on a Zoom meeting with the media, it looks like he’s already taking a few of the first steps.

“As coaches we always keep this list in our back pocket that if we have movement we can pursue. I’ve got four or five guys on that list for me. I immediately, as soon as I started getting in those conversations with Perry where I thought this is what he was going to do, I started contacting the top two on that list.”

A potential snag in the interview and hiring process, though, will come this week with Martin scheduled to have knee replacement surgery Thursday.

That will sideline him now for about a week as he recovers from it, but then he’ll be able to resume a few things on the assistant coach search and advance on a direction he already kind of has an idea of where he wants to go.

“It’s going to be hard to conduct any interviews or conversations. I’m not hiring an unknown,” Martin said. “I’m not going to get in conversations with people when I’m on Oxycodone and drooling down the side of my mouth. I’m probably 10 days out from me sitting down and saying this is the direction I want to row in. I have a pretty good feel for where I want to go with it.”

This is the first hire Martin’s had to make since Matt Figger left after the Final Four run to take over Austin Peay, and he hired Chuck Martin to fill that role.

Heading into this coaching search, he has a few criteria he’s looking for with fit being an incredibly important piece of it.

“I’m not into hiring the sexy name that everyone reads online. I’m not into hiring the person that has an ego bigger than this campus. I don’t run around with an ego; I don’t need an assistant coach running around with an ego,” he said. “I need an assistant coach that’s going to coexist with the guys we have in place. That’s not just with Chuck and Bruce, that’s with Scott and Andy and everyone else we have in place on our staff."

One of the other biggest things for him is on the recruiting front with him wanting to hire a coach who understands how the Gamecocks, Martin in particular, recruits and needing someone who can find guys who fit what South Carolina wants to do on the court.

“I have to find a guy that recruits like me. I’m not going to cheat. I can’t go get me a guy that’s going to be a hustler that’s going to just deliver players. That’s the biggest bunch of grub I’ve heard in my life. That’s a guy that needs to roll up his sleeves and wants to be willing to recruit like we recruit, which is patient. He needs to not recruit off a scouting report or off a player ranking list, but recruit the player that he sees develops, grows and fits into how we do things so that young man can come here and have success,” Martin said.

“Then on the court I’m big on player development. I always have been and always will be. He has to be somebody that gets engaged in a workout, in a practice and has the enthusiasm and energy to chase these guys around to do right.”