Bruce Ellington scored seven points against the Gators (file photo)
Things started bad and ended worse for USC Wednesday night in Gainesville. The 4th ranked Florida Gators opened the game with an 11-2 run. With just over 11 minutes left in the half they lead 17-4. With about nine minutes left it was 21-4 Gators, and by the time they reached the half the home team had a 33-10 lead.
It got worse.
Florida opened the second half on a 20-5 run to brush away any chance of a quasi respectable college basketball game taking place. The final score was 75-36.
After taking the beating Frank Martin responded about how you might expect Frank Martin to respond.
“I don’t think you guys need me to explain that we took a complete ass whooping so it is what it is,” Martin said.
Yeah, that pretty well sums up a 39 point loss. No need to sugarcoat it. On a separate but related note: Florida is really, really good. It hasn’t been quite THIS bad, but the Gators have been blown out all 7 SEC teams they’ve faced this season.
“They’re just old and strong and they know how to play and we’re not,” Martin said. They’ve got a 265 pound center and we’ve got RJ who is 215 pounds. They’ve got 6-10 guys, we’ve got 6-5 guys.”
The 10 point total in the first half is the lowest for an SEC team this season. 36 points is also the lowest point total ever in an SEC game for USC. It drains some of the confidence the Gamecock players had gained coming off a blowout win over Arkansas in their last game.
“I’m discouraged. They’re discouraged. But, I’m not going to disregard what we’ve done for the last seven weeks either. Listen, we got manhandled today. It is what it is. What are we going to do? Cry? Make excuses? We got thrown around like a junior varsity high school team here today. We got to wake up, we got to get back to what we’ve done, we’ve got to understand that our enthusiasm and our toughness has to get better. I told the players I hope this makes you understand that as a player you better get bigger, stronger, faster. …so the next time you are given an opportunity like this your better prepared to handle it.”
Here is the final box if you dare look. Michael Carrera led USC with 13 points. He also had nine rebounds. Bruce Ellington finished with seven points.
USC returns home to face Georgia Saturday afternoon. The Bulldogs beat Auburn Wednesday night.
You can enjoy all of Martin’s postgame interview below.
AUDIO: Frank Martin talks about Florida loss [2:52]
BRING BACK ALFALFA
Bruce Ellington has turned into an excellent football player, but basketball, well, that is another story altogether. The link below says it all:
http://statsheet.com/mcb/players/player/south-carolina/bruce-ellington
I know he tries hard, but he just cannot shoot very well, at least not on a consistent basis. Of course, that is true for most of the Gamecocks. One team stat that surprised me was that the Gamecocks are last in the SEC in field goal percentage defense. I thought dogged defense was one of the strrengths of a Frank Martin team….Personally–and I know it is still very, very early on in his tenure–but what I have seen thus far of Frank Martin does not show me much. I know he had success at Kansas State, but Darrin Horn had had success at Western Kentucky before coming to South Carolina. For one thing, the new players Martin has brought on board do not overly impress me. They are not bad players necessarily; they are just not transformative players, and South Carolina desperately needs to win an NCAA tournament game–it has been 40 years now–so it needs one or two blue chip players to do that.