Martin: We’ve got our hands full
This season, the South Carolina men’s basketball team has become all too familiar with potential bounce-back scenarios after tough losses.
It will be no different when the Gamecocks (8-14, 1-8 SEC) travel to Tennessee Saturday to take on the Volunteers, looking to rebound from a thwarted comeback attempt in Wednesday’s loss to Auburn. But despite South Carolina’s tendency to come out on the wrong side of winnable games, coach Frank Martin continues to point to three key players.
Senior guard Brenton Williams and freshmen Sindarius Thornwell and Duane Notice have drawn praise from their coach for leaving it all on the court regardless of what the scoreboard says.
“If I were to be negative about Sindarius, Duane or even Brent for that matter, then I don’t deserve to coach basketball,” Martin said.
Williams and Thornwell are the team’s first and second leading scorers, respectively, while Notice has amassed the highest assist total of any Gamecocks with 64 on the year. Williams leapfrogged Thornwell for the title of No. 1 scorer after turning in 29 points against the Tigers on Wednesday.
In just his first year with the program, Notice said that the season has been a learning process for him and his fellow freshmen. But with nine SEC games under his belt, he feels he’s ready to help take the reins of this South Carolina basketball team.
“The coaches are doing a great job in practice and with film with helping me see what I have to do for this team to win and how to run the offense and how to play defense,” Notice said. “And I’m just trying to be a leader.”
Notice and Thornwell were tasked with guarding Auburn’s dynamic duo of Chris Denson and K.T. Harrell last time out, which resulted in a combined 50 points from the two. But things won’t get any easier on Saturday when they arrive in Knoxville, Tenn.
The Volunteers have a prolific guard of their own in Jordan McRae, who is currently averaging the fifth-most points per game in the conference. But Tennessee’s depth is shown the closer you move to the basket.
Forward Jarnell Stokes has been a beast on the glass this year, averaging an SEC-best 10.4 rebounds per game, and he is backed up by the third-best rebounder in the conference in forward Jeronne Maymon, who averages 8.2.
“[Josh] Richardson and McRae, those two guys are on go. They’re in attack mode. They’re big, they’re athletic,” Martin said. “And then they’ve got two behemoths inside that I’m scared they might eat one of my freshmen.”
The Volunteers (14-8, 5-3 SEC) sit at No. 5 in the conference and are just outside the top-25 nationally having received two votes in the most recent Associated Press Poll. But they enter Saturday’s contest on the heels of a disappointing 64-60 upset loss to Vanderbilt, a feat that the Gamecocks will be looking to achieve when they get their turn with Tennessee.
South Carolina has played three of the SEC’s top-five teams already in Florida, Ole Miss and LSU, also against all but one of them the Gamecocks have managed to keep the game close before falling in the end. And Martin says that while he and his team know they will be in for a challenge against the Volunteers, there is no one in the South Carolina locker room hanging their heads.
“We’ve got our hands full,” Martin said. “But you know what, what are we going to do? Go home and cry? Pout? We ain’t going to do that.”