Frank Martin feels USC has done one key thing selection committee wants. What’s left?

Losing two Quadrant 1 win opportunities last week — that’s a blow to South Carolina basketball’s pursuit of an NCAA tournament spot.

But Gamecocks coach Frank Martin doesn’t quite see it as the blow some others might.

Coming into last week, it seemed as if USC might have needed at least one more high-grade victory. Martin, who professes to have a sense of the path his team will need to travel but says he doesn’t get caught up in the night-to-night swings, thinks his squad is in good shape in terms of the top end of its resume.

“We’ve got enough quality wins,” Martin said. “We’re not in a place like the last two years, (where) we haven’t had quality nonconference wins.

“This year we’ve got those kind of wins already. We got enough of them.”

So what is missing? Wins.

“We just need to win games,” Martin said. “What we can’t afford it this time of year is a losing streak. We’ve got to negate that.”

The Gamecocks currently sit at 16-11. Depending on conference strength and other schedule factors, 20 wins usually gets a team from one of the top six conferences into the conversation. Sometimes 19 wins, or maybe 18, are enough, but the memory of 24 not being enough a few years ago is still fresh in the mind of South Carolina fans.

The Gamecocks are sitting at four Quad 1 wins after a road win at Clemson has ticked up into that category. A home loss to Florida and road loss to Ole Miss shouldn’t hurt, though home losses to Boston College and Stetson are still blemishes. (Martin audibly groaned when he mentioned them.)

Still, those four Quad 1 wins mean something and USC does have six road wins, including Arkansas, Virginia and Clemson.

“We got enough quality wins,” Martin said. “Road wins, who we’ve been, where we’ve beaten (them). We just got to pile up more wins coming down the stretch.”

Martin’s team has at least five games left. They should be favored by decent margins against Georgia at home and Vanderbilt on the road. A somewhat formidable Mississippi State comes to Columbia. South Carolina also has to visit an Alabama team that has given it problems and is far more feisty than its 15-12 record suggests.

In a larger sense this is getting down to desperation time, but Martin is trying to approach it with a coach’s mindset: one day, one practice, one game.

“We have to win a game,” Martin said. “We don’t have to win four.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to beat Georgia. That’s it. When you win one, then you do it the next day.”

NEXT

What: Georgia at South Carolina

When: 6:30 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Colonial Life Arena

TV: SEC Network

Radio: 107.5 The Game in Columbia area

This story was originally published February 24, 2020 at 3:15 PM.