SOUTH CAROLINA GAMECOCKS BASKETBALL

Frank Martin could somewhat sense what was going to happen Saturday watching his team in SEC play.

He watched his team’s defensive connectivity slip as the games went on and, when the team had defensive breakdowns on its first three defensive possessions, the red warning light in his head started blinking.

Then, he watched as the Gamecocks gave up 89 points, tying a season-high, in a 23-point loss to LSU Saturday, the worst margin of defeat this season.

“When you play real good players, sometimes you do what you’re supposed to do and sometimes they make the play. When they do that, you pat them on the butt and say, ‘we’ll try again next time.’ The first three plays of the game we knew they were going run certain things to attack us and that’s exactly what they ran and we weren’t where we belong. We just weren’t there,” Frank Martin said. “We weren’t connected where we needed to be connected. That’s not a mistake. That’s just lack of focus.”

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The Gamecocks allowed 48 first-half points in a game wrought with misalignments and players just not being in the right place all game.

LSU has good players with Tremont Waters and Naz Reid considered NBA caliber players, but Martin wasn’t pleased with the team’s defensive schematics and getting out-rebounded by 20 and allowing 15 offensive rebounds.

He vowed to fix that in practice, and was incredibly happy to see how his team responded to its worst defeat this season.

“I can deal with losing, I can’t deal with losing the way we did by not playing the way we were supposed to play,” he said. “Yesterday I said we’re going to fix this, so we went pretty hard yesterday. They were great and in good spirits.”

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That practice capped a tumultuous week where the Gamecocks played three games in six days and had to travel to Vanderbilt on Tuesday then turn around to take a flight to Baton Rouge Friday.

They hadn’t had much down time and were about 24 hours removed from a lopsided loss that halted a five-game win streak and gave the team its first loss in SEC play.

Martin said they came in energized and even saw them watching film before the mid-afternoon practice.

So while he didn’t learn a lot from Saturday’s drubbing, he can take some positives from a productive Sunday.

“I learned from them yesterday,” he said. “Saturday was one of those days where I wasn’t very positive during or after. There wasn’t a lot to be positive about…but how we responded yesterday, that tells me what I thought going into that game. That’s that we have a real good group of guys that are trying to figure it out.”

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The Sunday practice gives Martin hope that the Gamecocks (9-8, 4-1 SEC) will play well Tuesday as the No. 16 Auburn Tigers (13-4, 2-2 SEC) come to town.

The game will tip off at 6:30 p.m. on the SEC Network.