SOUTH CAROLINA GAMECOCKS BASKETBALL
When South Carolina finished up its game Sunday against Houston, a 20-point loss, they had a week before getting back on the court again for their rivalry game against Clemson.
With such a big break and players taking finals, it gave Frank Martin a chance to do something he normally doesn’t get to do in-season and that’s really delve deep into his own team.
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“When you play a lot of games one on top of the other, I feel like a football coach now where I have Sunday and Monday to watch your own film so you can be prepared for that Tuesday practice.”
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The Gamecocks had two slow days Monday and Tuesday where coaches spent a lot of time going over film with players and gave the coaches a chance to reflect on what they learned about their team a third of the way through the season.
“I’ve learned I like our team. I’ve learned I like the guys on our team. I’ve learned that some guys are not as competitive as I thought they were. I don’t know how else to say it,” Martin said. “Will that ever change? I don’t know. You don’t learn these things in recruiting. You don’t learn these things in preseason workouts. I learned from our team, and I spoke a little about it after our Houston game, I thought we were going to be a pretty good perimeter, defend-the-dribble team. We’re not a great dribble drive team.”
The Gamecocks (6-4) have gotten off to probably a rockier start than most would have anticipated before the season, but three of the four losses—Wichita State, Northern Iowa and Houston—have come against teams that will likely be playing in the NCAA Tournament.
In watching film from those games, Martin’s left with a lot of optimism heading into the final push of non-conference play before SEC play starts.
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“The good is that we’re not that far away,” Martin said. “Northern Iowa is a really good basketball team. I thought we showed some of our capabilities against a high level opponent in that game offensively. We’ve got to become—I don’t like using the word tough, I said that to you guys yesterday and tough is too bland a word, too simple a word—personality is a better word."
The biggest problem to him has been the lack of personality on the team, and despite him liking the guys in the lineup, they need a player to be willing to step up and shoulder that responsibility.
He mentioned Maik Kotsar being a guy who’s trying to do it, but that personality could come from Jermaine Couisnard or Keyshawn Bryant, who’s just now getting back into the lineup.
“I want us to be louder. I want us to be more confident. I want us to be more aggressive. I think we’re a little passive. I tell them all the time, when our players are aggressive I can be passive. When our players are passive, I get too aggressive. When I get overly aggressive, I think I do a really bad job of coaching. We have to connect and make that a little better.”
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Right now the Gamecocks are the No. 108 team in KenPom ratings with offense being a sore spot right now.
They’re currently 136th nationally in offensive efficiency, 241st out of 353 teams in effective field goal percentage (47.2) and 324th in three-point percentage.
Martin hopes those shooting struggles at times stem less from the players themselves but more from the fact those guards he’s playing—AJ Lawson, Couisnard, Bryant, Jair Bolden and TJ Moss—are in their first or second year in Martin’s system and they’ll get better.
“When I reflect and I look back, every time I’ve had a team with young guards, we don’t shoot it well early in the year,” he said. “Last year, think about AJ Lawson early in the year. He couldn’t make a shot to save his life and he settled in and started making shots. It’s no different with Sindarius and Duane and keep going. I’m at peace that those guys work at it and are high-character kids and will eventually feel that ball go inside the basket and it’ll start happening on a more regular basis.”
The Gamecocks are in the middle of a pretty pivotal stretch with five of their next six games, including the first three of SEC play, coming against KenPom top 100 teams and three top 25 squads as well.
“Any time we’ve played a team that has the personnel that presents dribble-drive challenges, we have not fared well defensively. When we play teams that don’t have dribble-drive guys, we actually defend OK,” he said. “We have to get a lot better there. On the defensive side, when we played Houston we turned them over 17 times, which is twice as many as they average. They average 15 offensive rebounds a game, and I think they had 11 or 12 with three of which came in the last couple minutes of the game where it was over.”
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