Gamecocks veteran forward to miss rest of basketball season
South Carolina junior forward Alanzo Frink will miss the remainder of the season due to “medical reasons,” head coach Frank Martin announced Tuesday.
Frink played the first three games of the 2020-21 season for the Gamecocks but has not played for USC since Dec. 5 at Houston — the game preceding USC’s first COVID-19 pause. The Gamecocks have paused activities two more times since then and canceled or postponed seven games this season due to positive tests within the program.
Throughout the season, Martin has declined to discuss specifics on which of his players tested positive for COVID-19. He said Tuesday that Frink’s situation was still “too raw right now” for Frink or Frink’s family to comment.
But Martin did say that Frink gave the head coach permission to share a message about taking COVID-19 seriously — an indication that Frink’s absence is related to the virus.
“I met with him (Tuesday) morning, and the one thing that he wants to make sure that’s clear here right now: He doesn’t want to make this about him or a feel-sorry kind of soap opera,” Martin said. “But at the same time he wants to make sure that other people that are out there that are going through this moment, make sure that you’re getting checked out. This is real. This is not something to play with. This is not your common cold that you just kind of get through it and you’re good to go.
“There’s a lot of details and a lot of boxes that need to be checked. And it’s important that everyone out there checks those boxes.”
Martin praised team athletic trainer Mark Rodger and the school’s medical staff for taking a cautious, protective approach with Frink and said “doctors are confident” in Frink’s prognosis. Frink has been around the team and is in “great spirits,” Martin said. He added that Frink has taken on somewhat of a coach’s role with the team, helping freshman Tre-Vaughn Minott — a freshman forward who joined the team midseason — get up to speed.
Fellow junior Justin Minaya has known Frink since the two represented the Dominican Republic at the 2016 FIBA U17 World Championship.
“I mean, that’s my guy,” Minaya said Tuesday. “It’s sad to see him sit out, but I think he’s in good spirits. And seeing him happy, seeing him around us, just being together — he is a friend before he is a teammate.”
In three games this season, Frink averaged 3.3 points per game and 3 rebounds per game. Along with sophomore forward Jalyn McCreary, who has played just one game since Dec. 5, Frink’s absence has left the USC front-court thin and inexperienced, contributing to the team’s recent three-game losing streak.
In good news for the Gamecocks, Martin said Tuesday that McCreary returned to practice this week and is expected to play against Georgia on Wednesday night in Columbia, saying McCreary passed all of the medical tests necessary to return to the court. But it’s unclear just how much McCreary will be able to play after practicing only a handful of times in the last month.
Frink opened the season as the team’s starting center, with Martin calling him the best big on the team. Without him, the Gamecocks have had to lean on 6-foot-10 sophomore Wildens Leveque, who has averaged 18.9 minutes per game and started five of the team’s eight games.
But beyond the pure basketball impact of Frink’s loss, COVID continues to take a psychological toll on the Gamecocks, Martin said. The head coach is still recovering from his second case of COVID-19, saying if he didn’t have a responsibility to his team and fellow coaches, he would have opted out of the season to recover.
The virus has touched the team in other ways, including infecting top assistant Chuck Martin. Martin also said Tuesday that sophomore guard Jermaine Couisnard has been dealing with a COVID-19 situation “back home” that has hit him in a “hard, hard way” emotionally. But Martin declined to go into any more details than that.
The loss of Frink is yet another emotional blow for a roster that has been hit hard by the coronavirus.
“The Alanzo situation has taken a toll on our team,” Martin said. “It’s emotional. It’s hard to be good physically when you’re in emotional turmoil, and our team has been in an emotional turmoil pretty much the whole time.
“It’s hard to be at peace and be good physically when you’re constantly fighting emotional battles internally, and that’s just another chapter of the emotional tug of war that our players have been under this season.”
Next USC basketball game
Who: South Carolina (3-5, 1-3 SEC) vs. Georgia (9-5, 2-5)
Where: Colonial Life Arena in Columbia
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday
Watch: ESPN2
This story was originally published January 26, 2021 at 12:16 PM.
