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Scott Davis: Searching for a Spark

Scott Davis has followed Gamecock sports for more than 30 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective.

He writes a weekly newsletter that's emailed each Friday. To sign up for the newsletter, click here. Following is the newsletter for Friday, Jan. 21, 2022.

Scott also writes a weekly column that appears on Gamecock Central during football season.

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It’s always dangerous to make assumptions about a season before it’s over.

Shane Beamer’s South Carolina Gamecocks just proved it. The Football Cocks were 4-4 after eight games during the 2021 season and had just been absolutely shelled by Texas A&M. They looked utterly lost offensively and appeared to be regressing on defense for good measure. Any momentum the program had gained during the feelgood days of Beamer’s arrival in Columbia seemed to have been temporarily stalled as the Gamecocks entered a bye week.

Then the team unexpectedly and emphatically drilled ancient nemesis Florida, hung on to beat Auburn and won a bowl game by routing a North Carolina program that Gamecock fans have traditionally loathed. All of a sudden Beamer was winning First-Year Coach of the Year Honors and the storyline surrounding South Carolina football had officially been flipped from “let’s wait and see” to “this is a program on the rise” (Excitement from 2021 season has not subsided).

The lesson? You should always let the season play out before deciding what the takeaway from it is.

Still, as January steams into its final days, I think it’s now worth asking: Does it feel to you like this South Carolina men’s basketball team is getting ready to turn a corner, catch fire and make a late run to the NCAA Tournament? And if it doesn’t – and most of us already agree it doesn’t – does it feel to you like there’s any momentum for better days with the Gamecock men’s program in the near future? Do you expect to see this team start making the NCAA Tournament once every two or three years anytime soon, or occasionally competing for SEC titles?

I don’t think it’s sacrilegious to be asking these questions.

Not when we’re in Year 10 of coach Frank Martin’s tenure at South Carolina. In sports, 10 years represents a vast sample size. It’s an eternity, an Ice Age. After 10 years, you’re not rebuilding or regrouping or reloading or re-anything-ing. You are what you are. We know what to expect from you.

And after a decade, we know that we can almost always expect Martin’s teams to play hard. We know they’ll be scrappy, that they’ll battle, that they’ll generally be competitive in the SEC, that they’ll lose a few head-scratchers they certainly shouldn’t lose (but also likely win a game or two they probably shouldn’t win), that they’ll often face more talented rosters stocked with more highly recruited players, that they typically won’t get embarrassed, and that they almost certainly won’t make the NCAA Tournament at the end of the season.

The team has been a participant in March Madness just once in Martin’s decade on campus, with only a single NIT bid to show for the remaining seasons.

While South Carolina is so often inconsistent on the court, the program itself has become strikingly predictable from year to year. True, there was that inconceivable Final Four run from five years ago, and none of us will ever forget it. But with every passing season, that spectacular three weeks appears more like the exception that proves the rule.

In general, we know what we’ll get from South Carolina basketball each year.

The team will compete.

But they won’t electrify their fans or fight for championships while doing it.

Getting Offensive

So what’s next?

After a 75-59 drubbing on the road at Arkansas on Tuesday, the Gamecock men appear to be slowly foreclosing on the possibility that they’ll dance this March – they’ve now lost four of their last five conference games. There are some winnable games on the horizon, starting with Saturday’s contest against a genuinely dreadful Georgia, and it wouldn’t shock me in the slightest if they put together a mini-winning streak and generated a mild wave of enthusiasm before falling back to the pack by season’s end.

As has often been the case during the Martin years, South Carolina is struggling to put the basketball through the hoop this season. According to TeamRankings.com, the Gamecocks rank 215th out of 358 college teams in points per game, and the news is even worse for their offensive efficiency ranking: they’re a stunning 285th in the nation in that category. I probably don’t have to tell you that being 285th in anything isn’t good.

The Gamecocks under Martin have often found ways to compete through defense and rebounding and a stubborn ability to turn games into “could go either way” slugfests. What they so rarely do is shoot the lights out and blow opponents off the floor.

The lack of offense might be one of the reasons why South Carolina fans have often struggled to connect with the men’s team during the last few years. Their games just don’t linger in your mind when they’re over – you don’t recall stirring runs, feverish and breathless bouts of scoring, sizzling hot streaks from three-point land.

Sure, fans like winning.

But more than that, fans also want to connect. They need a storyline to gravitate around, personalities they can cherish, and thrilling moments to remember. They need to feel their hearts beating when they think of the teams they love.

They need, in fact, to feel the very things they feel when they think about Dawn Staley’s basketball teams.

A Tale of Two Programs

Few programs in any sport would survive a comparison to the one that Dawn Staley has built in Columbia. And indeed, it is Staley’s women’s team that has truly captured the hearts and minds of Gamecock fans.

That’s because Staley’s teams don’t just win – they’ve managed to fuse themselves completely with the fan base through positive vibes and a “never say die” approach. No women’s basketball team in the country can currently claim the same level of support that the number one Gamecocks have, and a packed and frenzied Colonial Life Arena awaits them every time they tipoff at home.

Comparing the two programs probably doesn’t make sense.

And yet, Staley’s success only serves as further confirmation of what’s possible at South Carolina. She’s answered every question and met every challenge that has been thrown at her, and that makes all of the alleged “reasons” why we should lower our expectations for the Gamecock men sound utterly flimsy.

You say there’s not enough tradition to build upon for South Carolina basketball? Staley had none when she got here. You say the fans aren’t supportive enough to create a championship foundation at South Carolina? Games during Staley’s first few seasons here were so sparsely attended that the handful of fans in the building could hear what the players and coaches were saying to each other. You say SEC basketball is difficult? It’s even more imposing on the women’s side.

There is no challenge facing the South Carolina men’s program that was not also present by a factor of ten for the Gamecock women’s program when Dawn Staley arrived.

Meanwhile, the only thing fans want to do is connect. They want to rally around their team, they want to believe, they want to give you their hearts and souls.

Dawn Staley and the Gamecock women have given them a reason to do all of that, and then some.

Here’s hoping someday the Gamecock men will consistently do the same.

Tell me what you think about the future of South Carolina basketball by writing me at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com.

For Gamecock fans who want to make a difference
For Gamecock fans who want to make a difference
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