Taking stock of South Carolina basketball’s résumé, tourney hopes and the road ahead
As South Carolina men’s basketball coach Frank Martin lamented the discussion about his team and its chances on the NCAA tournament bubble, he said he felt there was a path to make it. But he didn’t want to get into specifics.
His players Wednesday night likewise said the long view wasn’t part of their approach — they’re just looking to win one game at a time.
But we are not held to such limited viewpoints. There are seven regular season games left. The Gamecocks aren’t, at the moment, considered much of a bubble team, but the bubble is also terrifically weak this season. Part of that is the computer rankings not thinking much of the SEC, a stumbling block for USC, but that also means pushing into the picture might not be too difficult.
Coming off their Jan. 29 win over Arkansas, the Gamecocks had some cause for optimism with a softer schedule upcoming. Since then, South Carolina has gone 3-1, knocking around a few bad teams, including Georgia on the road. USC’s resume looks a little like this:
▪ Quad 1 wins: 3 (with five losses)
▪ Quad 2 wins: 2
▪ Sub-Quad 2 losses: 2 (Both Quad 4)
▪ Overall NET: No. 65 (this raw number often doesn’t matter all that much)
Last year, the first with the NET ranking, the 11 seeds are a good place to start when looking at all this. The six teams had between two and five Q1 wins, with high-major teams averaging a bit more than four. Most of them had slightly more robust Q2 numbers and at least one sub-Q2 loss.
South Carolina clearly needs more when it comes to those top-end wins. In the past two seasons, 19 wins likely would have put USC in. The Gamecocks sit at 15-9. So what’s coming next?
Tennessee at home: Q2
At Mississippi State: Q1
LSU at home: Q1
Georgia at home: Q3
At Alabama: Q1
Mississippi State at home: Q2
At Vanderbilt: Q3
At the moment, the KenPom projection system has USC closing out with four more wins and three more losses. If it broke that way with losses in the toughest games, the Gamecocks would get to 4-2 in Quad 2 games, 3-8 in Quad 1 and still have the Quad 4 losses to Stetson and Boston University hanging over them.
So 5-2, with one Quad 1 win, likely has to be the ticket to being even in the discussion.
Four Quad 1 wins would be a pretty decent base. Last year, there were five teams that missed the tournament with four or more wins on Selection Sunday against teams that ended up Quad 1.
Only one of those teams had 15 or fewer losses, a 19-13 Georgetown team, and none were better than .500 in league (both in the Big East). Were South Carolina to close on a 5-2 run, it would have 20 or more wins and likely 12 losses with a 12-6 conference record.
The edge of the NCAA tournament is always tricky. Conference tournament upsets steal bids. Teams leave notes just sour enough to sink them. South Carolina knows this experience well.
But the path likely is what it is. Get to 5-2 with one more big win, and USC is in solid shape. Go 4-3, and the chances get much longer, perhaps reliant on a good matchup and win in the SEC tournament.
Been here before
It’s worth noting South Carolina’s basketball team each of the past two years has stared down the barrel of must-win stretches. They’d clawed out some good wins, and in stronger conferences, had their own paths.
The 2017-18 team had taken some lower-rated losses, but sandwiched upsets of Kentucky at home and Florida on the road around a tight home loss to Tennessee to move to 13-7 and 4-4 in the SEC.
The Gamecocks were facing down a challenging stretch, and if they could have pulled out a few tight ones they would have stayed in decent shape. They lost six in a row, three tight ones, and got blown away by a Florida team they’d already beat.
The next year, South Carolina clawed its way to 14-12 and 9-4 in conference, with wins against Auburn, Florida and Mississippi State. USC probably needed to win four of five to get in decent position, but instead lost a big lead at Mississippi State, then saw A.J. Lawson get hurt against Alabama as they lost two more.
That team was dragged down by bad losses to Stony Brook and Wyoming, similar to the BU and Stetson losses this season. Flip those and South Carolina is 17-7 with no loss worse than at Ole Miss.
