Yes, it's real. Carolina is one of the last eight teams standing in the NCAA Tournament.
Yeah, North Carolina too, but I'm talking about South Carolina, that scrappy group that was picked to finish eighth in its own conference at SEC Media Days this fall. Those Gamecocks, they're one of eight groups with a chance to win it all.
No one thought this was possible. After losing Michael Carrera and two other seniors, South Carolina was supposed to take a step back, not a leap forward. The Gamecocks were going to have a mediocre season, and Sindarius Thornwell and his fellow seniors were going to be gone. Everyone expected it. One of our writers here wrote before the season that this team couldn't become a legitimate threat because of average recruiting.
But it's not recruiting that got the Gamecocks here.
This South Carolina team seems to have embodied the attitude of its coach Frank Martin, fighting tooth and nail through all sorts of adversity. Trailing at half against Marquette and Duke, the Gamecocks climbed back to win both games relatively comfortably.
It was the Round of 32 upset of Duke that showed me there was something special about this team.
Matched up with one of the most, if not the most talented team in the country, South Carolina built a 10-point lead with about five minutes to go. Generally when the less talented team is in that situation, you see them panic, fail to execute and eventually lose (see Rhode Island vs. Oregon, or any of 10 million other examples throughout NCAA basketball history).
That just didn't happen. The Gamecocks looked confident in the final minutes against the Blue Devils, and all I could think was: "Wow. Frank Martin convinced these guys that they're the better team."
They didn't feel the pressure then, and they didn't feel it Friday either. After that dominant 18-0 first-half run, South Carolina never let Baylor back in it, maintaining a double-digit lead for the rest of the game. When the Bears looked like they had a little bit of fight left in them, putting together a 10-0 run to cut the lead to 11, the Gamecocks stepped on their throats, as Thornwell and Duane Notice nailed back-to-back threes to put the game on ice.
"When we were on a run... they answered," Baylor's Ishmail Wainright said. "They're seniors. That's what seniors do, they answer."
There have been times this season where the product on the court has been questionable, but there's been no doubting the heart of this team. And it all trickles down from Martin — and from Thornwell — to the rest of the players.