What went wrong in South Carolina’s 23-point loss to Auburn
No one knows who the real South Carolina men’s basketball team is. Not even head coach Frank Martin does.
Are the Gamecocks the same team who went toe-to-toe against Houston and LSU on the road this season and led at halftime? Or are they the defensively porous team they’ve been the last three games?
On Saturday afternoon, Martin’s Gamecocks put up the worst defensive performance of any Martin-coached team at South Carolina. Auburn defeated the Gamecocks, 109-86, saddling USC with its third-straight loss.
The Tigers’ 109 points are the most points scored by a Gamecock opponent under Martin and the most ever scored by Auburn on the road against a Southeastern Conference opponent.
“(We) had no fight in our belly,” Martin said. “Auburn’s a team, they’re very young, but they come at you off the dribble from different spots on the floor. So that means everyone has to be accountable for having the courage to fight and guard the basketball. .... We didn’t have a single guy that put up a fight defending the ball. That gets them going downhill, and they just toyed with us.
“That’s why we got embarrassed the way we did.”
The Gamecocks have paused team activities three separate times due to positive COVID-19 tests within the program this season and still don’t have a complete roster at their disposal. On Saturday, playing just their third home game of the season, South Carolina showed they still have work to do.
“Right now we’re a team without an identity,” Martin said. “And how do I fix that? I’ve always fixed it through practice and discipline and holding people accountable. The confusing thing about this team is, we have a lot of guys who have been through that already. We shouldn’t have gone on rewind and start from scratch again.”
3 Observations from USC-Auburn
1. Defensive struggles mount
One of the keys for the Gamecocks in practice this week was cleaning up the defensive lapses that buried them early at Missouri and put them behind late against LSU.
Entering Saturday’s game, USC ranked 11th in the SEC and 217th nationally with 72 points allowed per game. Before Saturday, the Gamecocks allowed opponents to shoot 45.3% from the field — 13th in the SEC and 247th nationally.
Whatever adjustments the Gamecocks made during the week didn’t stick.
Auburn had its way with USC offensively, especially in the first half, as the Tigers shot 53% from the field and 57% from beyond the three-point line. In just the first half alone, Auburn point guard Sharife Cooper tallied 11 assists — to go along with 10 points and five rebounds — as he spread the ball with ease against the Gamecocks. Cooper finished with 16 points and 12 assists.
With veteran forwards Alanzo Frink and Jalyn McCreary still out of action, the Gamecocks struggled to defend Auburn in the low post. Auburn capitalized on its size advantage, routinely setting up 6-foot-8, 230-pound forward Jaylin Williams for short scores near the basket. Williams responded with 18 points on 8-of-12 shooting.
The Tigers out-rebounded USC 46-34 and outscored the Gamecocks in the paint, 46-30.
Martin said earlier this week that 6-foot-10 forward Wildens Leveque has been “the lone survivor” in the USC frontcourt following the team’s COVID-19 woes. At times Saturday, with Leveque on the bench, the Gamecocks didn’t have a single player on the court taller than 6-foot-6.
With so few practices this season, Martin likened coaching the Gamecocks to coaching an AAU team — teams that generally don’t play a strong, united defense due to a lack of structure.
Auburn coach Bruce Pearl told Martin after the game that he generally considers Martin one of the best defensive coaches in the game.
“He goes, ‘Frank, I’ve told my teams that no one guards their yard better than your teams,’ meaning every guy on my team is responsible for their man when they have the ball, and no one does it better than we do,” Martin said.
“(Pearl) said, ‘You guys don’t do that right now.’ And I said, ‘Who are you telling? I see that every day.’’’
2. Inconsistent guard play
After USC’s loss to Missouri, Martin said, “We’re just not good at point guard right now.”
Guard play was supposed to be a strength for USC this season, but the team hasn’t found the right formula in these last three games. The starting lineup has remained the same since the team returned from its second COVID-19 pause against Florida A&M on Jan. 2, with North Carolina transfer Seventh Woods playing the point, Jermaine Couisnard at two-guard and A.J. Lawson at the three
Lawson, the team’s leading scorer this season, once again led the Gamecocks in scoring Saturday with his 23 points, but he scored only 5 points in the second half. Neither Woods nor Couisnard found success shooting the ball. And defensively, they did little to stop Cooper from distributing the ball and setting up Auburn’s half-court offense.
With the Gamecocks obviously thin in the post, effective guard play has become all the more important for the Gamecocks. Martin said after the Missouri loss that if Lawson and Couisnard aren’t making shots, the Gamecocks won’t win many games.
That lack of scoring didn’t doom the Gamecocks on Saturday; their defense did. But there were still stretches of the game where USC looked lost offensively. Midway through the first half, the Gamecocks went nearly eight minutes without scoring a field goal.
“Effort-wise we didn’t give it as much as we’ve got,” Lawson said. “And team-wise we’ve got to communicate and just be there together as a team and listen.”
3. Lack of leadership
Martin hinted at a “private matter” in the locker room that he didn’t want to discuss publicly and said that the team is lacking leadership from its veteran players. Though Martin has generally taken a gentler approach this season in discussing his team given the COVID-19 circumstances surrounding the program, he didn’t hold back after Saturday’s game and said he’s still searching for answers on how to get his team back on track.
“Our leadership’s not very good,” Martin said. “It’s not negative. When I’ve got bad leadership, I’d say it’s bad leadership. Right now, we have no leadership. We’re just there.
“And in life there’s nothing worse than just being there. When you look in the mirror, what’s the person who’s looking back at you, what does that person stand for? Right now, as a team, we don’t stand for anything.”
Next USC basketball game
Who: South Carolina (3-5, 1-3 SEC) vs. Georgia (9-4, 2-4)
Where: Colonial Life Arena
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday
Watch: ESPN2
This story was originally published January 23, 2021 at 2:06 PM.
