The hard road for one Gamecock, and how he bailed out his team in a crucial moment
What brought Keyshawn Bryant to that moment, standing in the way of a 6-foot-9, 212-pound high-end SEC player, wasn’t easy.
Through most of a gritty SEC home game, the South Carolina basketball forward had not produced what one wants on the offensive end. His first two shots failed to draw iron. Another was blocked. His only make came off a goal-tending call. He came on briefly in the middle of the second half but was quickly benched after a sloppy turnover.
And this game came in the midst of a hard season in which a sophomore year filled with promise was sidetracked again and again.
Yet at game’s end, he found himself playing down a position, slotting in at power forward despite standing only 6-foot-5, 197 pounds. He ended up absorbing contact from Volunteers big man John Fulkerson, getting knocked off his feet and drawing an offensive foul that came close to clinching the game for South Carolina.
“We made a bad mistake on defense late in that game, bad mistake,” Gamecocks coach Frank Martin said. “He bailed us out. Bailed us out because he rotated to take that charge.”
Even with the missed shots and turnovers, Bryant gave something else to his teammates
“Even when his ‘stats’ don’t look good in a game like Tennessee, where none of our stats looked good, you really feel Keyshawn out there when he’s playing on defense,” junior guard Jair Bolden said. “On offense, it’s his presence and his leadership. He’s one of the guys we look to to set the tone of the game.”
Coming off a freshman season in which he averaged 23.8 minutes and nine points in 32 games with 26 starts, Bryant seemed poised to take a step from explosive raw athlete into a more well-rounded player this year.
Then came a knee injury that cost him more than a month.
He returned, started to produce, and then early on against Texas A&M he suffered a concussion. A return two games later saw him play all of two healthy contests before swelling in the other knee started limiting his practice time, which dragged down his level of play.
“Key has had an inconsistent year because he just can’t stay on the floor,” Martin said. “He was having a great, not good, great preseason. Hurts his knee. Like a young player that’s trying to become a better player, not just an athlete, he misses five weeks of practice time.
“He’s really trying. But we need him to be more consistent. For him to be consistent, he needs reps and to stay on the floor, peace of mind. But he’s really trying.”
Overall, Bryant is averaging 7.3 points and shooting 44.6 percent. He’s also averaging 2.8 turnovers a game in fewer than 19 minutes.
Martin noted Bryant and Jermaine Couisnard are close, and their levels of play tend to rise and fall together.
Bryant’s teammates are sympathetic watching him go through all this.
“He’s stayed the course is what I could say,” freshman guard Trae Hannibal said. “A guy like him with the knee injury and the surgery early, he could’ve quit a long time ago with the season. But he just did his rehab and came back. He’s just been helping us.”
This story was originally published February 18, 2020 at 9:45 AM.
