South Carolina will try to stop a two-game skid when it hosts Georgia Wednesday evening.

1. Getting back on track

It seems like a long time ago that South Carolina had won six out of seven games and had a chance to play its way into second place in the SEC. In reality, it was a week ago. Such is life on the bubble in the jumbled SEC race. Now South Carolina has to regroup and try to get things going in the right direction again.

Georgia seems like a good team to do that against - but then again the one loss in that seven game span was to the equally beatable Ole Miss. Georgia is just 4-10 in the SEC, has a NET ranking of 90, and was easily beaten by South Carolina two weeks ago in Athens. Playing each other twice in such a short span is unusual, but Frank Martin doesn’t think it offers an advantage for either team.

“There’s a benefit that you get the home game the second time,” Frank Martin said. “The game’s all matchups.”

2. “Pile up some wins”

South Carolina missed out on the chance for quality wins against Mississippi State and LSU that could have boosted the Gamecocks’ NET ranking. Now, with four regular season games and the SEC tournament left, South Carolina can’t worry about “good” wins, it just needs wins.

“We just need to win games,,” Martin said. “We’ve got enough quality wins, road wins, who we’ve beat, we’ve just got to pile up wins down the stretch.”

South Carolina needs four more wins to reach 20 for the season. At one time, that was a magic number for getting into the tournament, although the selection committee has increasingly gone away from the total number of wins when looking at a team’s resume. (Ironically, the 2008-09 Gamecocks are one of the reasons for that trend. They piled up 21 wins against a terrible non-conference schedule and an extremely weak SEC. But that season was worth it because they hosted Davidson in the NIT and we got to see Stephen Curry before he turned pro.)

3. More on McCreary

Jalyn McCreary returned from a head injury and played six minutes against LSU. He was only cleared to play about two hours before the game, one of the reasons for his brief appearance.

“Hopefully he gives us two days of really good preparation so he can go out there and be confident,” Martin said Monday. “

Another reason for McCreary’s low minutes was the solid play of Wildens Leveque. Leveque had five points and tied his career-high with eight rebounds against LSU, after notching six points and five rebounds against Mississippi State. They aren’t huge numbers, but they are solid, and more importantly, the light bulb might have come on defensively. Leveque’s defensive struggles have been rough at times, as other teams repeatedly took advantage of him not understanding rotations. But he is getting to the right spots faster now and he’s able to hold his own.

“He’s a really good player,” LSU coach Will Wade said Saturday. “He’s going to be a very, very good player. He killed us on the glass.”

4. Milestone Watch

- Maik Kotsar needs 27 points to reach 1,000 for his career. He is averaging 10.9 points per game this season, but 15.4 over the last seven games.

- Kotsar needs 52 rebounds to reach 700. He is averaging 6.5 rebounds per game this season, so it will be a tough accomplishment, but he needs just 36 to enter the top ten.

- Kotsar has played 127 career games, eight all time at South Carolina.With five more, he will move into fifth place. He needs 11 more games to tie Duane Notice for the career record. Kotsar’s 127 games started are second all-time, behind Sindarius Thornwell’s 132.

- South Carolina is one game out of fourth place in the SEC. South Carolina has finished in the top four of the SEC three of the last four seasons.Kentucky has finished in the top four all four years, but nobody else has finished in the top four more than twice.

- Micaiah Henry’s quest to finish the season - and his Gamecock career - with exactly one point continues.

- This is the third straight Wednesday that South Carolina has played a team called the “Bulldogs,” South Carolina was at Georgia, then at Mississippi State, and now home for Georgia. Next week’s midweek opponent? You guessed it, Mississippi State, although that game is on Tuesday. Clearly this should be factored into South Carolina’s NET ranking.

5. Scouting the Bulldogs

Not much changes in two weeks, but the Bulldogs are coming in riding a two-game SEC winning streak that includes an upset of Auburn, and they have made a subtle change in those two games. Previously, Georgia was a virtual one-man team with Anthony Edwards. Now, he is getting more help. The Bulldogs had four players score in double figures against Auburn and six with eight or more points against Vanderbilt. Edwards is still Edwards, averaging 18.5 points in the wins, but he isn’t having to score 30 anymore.

“I thought the first time we played we were able to minimize how much Edwards had the ball in his hands,” Martin said. “The ball is ending up in his hands sooner in the possession. We’ve got to be prepared.”

That change ensures that Edwards is able to create more often, either his own shot or opportunity for teammates.

‘We’re going to get a big time shot from him on Wednesday,” Martin said. “We’ve got to be prepared to absorb a very aggressive and very good player and figure out a way to neutralize that the best we can.”

The Ws

Who: South Carolina (16-11, 8-6) vs Georgia 14-13, 4-10)

When: Wednesday, February 26, 6:30 pm

Where: Colonial Life Arena

Watch: SEC Network