How South Carolina basketball is surviving without the skeleton key to its lineup
Flip on the final eight minutes or so of South Carolina basketball’s upset win against Kentucky earlier this season, and you’ll see it.
There’s Maik Kotsar anchoring the Gamecocks from the center spot. There’s often a set of three USC guards — each with varying skillsets. And there’s No. 10, Justin Minaya, standing 6-foot-6, 215 pounds and mixing it up with five-star big men. If one of the guards departs, Minaya is alongside another wing his size, giving a kind of versatility and more shooting to South Carolina’s lineups.
And for six games, USC has been adapting and holding their own without their skeleton key for flexibility.
“The one guy that was unique on our team as to what he brought every day was Justin,” Gamecock coach Frank Martin said of the third-year sophomore who is out indefinitely after thumb surgery. “When we lose him, trying to replace his uniqueness is not simple.”
The Gamecocks have done what that can in his absence. At times they’ve been able to play a second big man, working in Wildens Leveque and Alanzo Frink. But each player is foul-prone and neither is natural on the perimeter.
Keyshawn Bryant, the only other true wing in the rotation, often does some things Minaya could. But he’s not as adept at shooting or projecting the ball.
Martin said he’d like freshman Jalyn McCreary to pick up some of that slack, but the freshman is raw and missed time with a head injury, only getting cleared hours before the team’s last game.
“We were doing pretty good when we had Jalen,” Martin said. “We were surviving and we were growing and now we got to get back to that this week.”
Martin admitted that he might sound like a broken record, but some matchups just got more difficult without Minaya.
The third-year forward missed much of last season with a knee injury. He was a 36% 3-point shooter as a freshman, and was still working back to that this season (shooting 26.4% to go with and 64.7% from the free throw line).
But he still provided more shooting pop than almost anyone in South Carolina’s frontcourt. And for a player of his size, Minaya brings a surprising level of toughness.
On a per-game basis, he was second on the team in rebounding (6.1) and offensive rebounding (1.9), the latter number coming just 0.1 behind Kotsar. He also averaged 1.25 blocks a game in his final eight before the injury, something Martin said spoke to his ability to protect the rim when needed.
“Justin had developed,” Martin said, “which had given us a toughness personality at the rim with a guard-defensive ability. So when we play teams that play small, for lack of better words, we didn’t lose our physicality or ability to defend on the perimeter.”
His absence reduces the team’s flexibility. Lineups with two big wings don’t really exist, unless one counts pairing Bryant and McCreary. The three-guard lineups lack spacing and Minaya’s defensive skills. It also means more Kotsar at the four position, with Leveque and Frink at the five.
A.J. Lawson, who had helped the team’s flexibility as the tallest and longest guard in three-guard looks, said everyone had to step up, and he individually tried to give more on the boards to make up for the absence.
The Gamecocks are 3-3 since Minaya’s injury. They won at Georgia and gutted one out against Tennessee, but they were often working through different looks through losses to LSU and Mississippi State.
Perhaps that’s where his absence seems most acute. Minaya was reliable and versatile, the kind of player who could stay out for long stretches and avoid the mistakes that get players pulled.
“I said it when it happened, I probably didn’t say publicly, but it’s the one player that we didn’t have anyone else like him on our team in Justin,” Martin said. “He’s the one guy that’s different.”
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
