South Carolina's men's basketball team has played 17 games this season, but the Gamecocks might as well be back at square one. At least, that’s how head coach Frank Martin sees it.
At the beginning of the month, the Gamecocks were garnering national attention and receiving votes for the AP Top 25 after upsetting then-No. 9 Iowa State on Jan. 3 to improve to 9-3, but South Carolina’s good fortune has gone down the drain.
The Gamecocks’ lousy 1-4 start in SEC play has Martin as frustrated as ever, especially following his team’s 66-62 loss to Tennessee.
South Carolina shot a season-low 34.4 percent in the defeat against the Volunteers, and trailed by as many as 17 points.
“We continue to slide, instead of grow, and that’s why I’ve been talking about leadership and focus and energy,” Martin said. “We’ve had none since we’ve got back from New York and we haven’t handled success real good and, unless that changes, we’ll continue in the world that we’re in right now rather than the world we were in in December and the early part of the month.”
During its seven-game winning streak earlier in the season, South Carolina shot 48.4 percent, but the Gamecocks are making just 40.68 percent of their shots on average through five conference games.
Martin said that his players have not made a commitment to getting up shots on their own time since the spring semester began.
“We’re back in school. We haven’t shot the ball worth a you-know-what since league play started,” Martin said. “Not one time have we shot it well since league play started. You think guys would find time to shoot balls. They did in November and December.”
Meanwhile, South Carolina’s offense isn’t the only thing that’s suffering. Martin is, too.
“Practice is all of a sudden a drag,” Martin said. “I go home with a headache every single night.”
The Gamecocks have little time to turn things around as they host No. 1 Kentucky on Saturday at noon.
Sophomore small forward Sindarius Thornwell, who scored 14 points in South Carolina’s upset of the Wildcats last season, said that the Gamecocks need to start fresh.
“I think we have to go back to the drawing board, and see what we have to do to get ourselves back to where we were before conference play,” Thornwell said.