South Carolina’s Frank Martin on bubble speculation: ‘Who cares?’
After South Carolina men’s basketball scored several of big wins this season and started looking toward the arguably softer part of its schedule, the topic was bound to come up.
Gamecocks coach Frank Martin doesn’t want to hear anything about it.
“Who cares?” Martin said. “Really, seriously, who cares in the first week of February whether you’re in, out, bubble, blew up? Who cares? Bubblicious. Blow your bubble. Who cares? At the end of the day, there’s a day in March where the teams that belong are going to get in.”
In each of the last couple seasons, there has been a moment when the Gamecocks scored a couple of resume-boosting victories, and if they could beat every team they were favored against and snag a couple surprise wins, it could work its way into the conversation. And the past few times, it hasn’t been able to get that combination.
Martin said the main thing that hurts his team is a pair of home losses to teams ranked outside of the top 150 in the NET rankings in Stetson and Boston University. His team is 3-5 in Quad 1 games, with wins against Kentucky at home and Arkansas and Virginia on the road.
Taking a road loss to Ole Miss last week didn’t help. That puts a lot of pressure on Wednesday night‘s showdown against Georgia in Athens, a game that projects to be somewhat of a tossup.
All told, the 14-9 Gamecocks project to be favored three more times and and underdog five more times by the KenPom rankings. Five will likely be in the range of tossups, with a predicted margin of three points or less.
Figuring out the win total that might get the Gamecocks into the Big Dance could be tricky. The metrics don’t have the SEC particularly high, but the bubble is also particularly weak.
But Martin says he sees a path.
“Are we in a place where I think we can get there?” Martin said. “I think we are. But got to win. It’s not really complicated.”
This story was originally published February 10, 2020 at 2:31 PM.
