The worst season of Frank Martin’s college basketball coaching life likely will end this week in Nashville at the SEC Tournament. The 11th seeded Gamecocks will play Ole Miss late Thursday night. With 12 losses in their last 15 games, many in blow-out fashion, the Gamecocks have given little indication they can suddenly come to life and extend their season with a deep run.
When the season ends, Martin will be left with two years on his contract. Locally and nationally his future with the program he has built over nine seasons is being debated. In a Zoom session with the media Tuesday morning, Martin acknowledged this one bad season of his tenure but also expressed the belief he can fix the problems.
Key comments from Martin Tuesday:
- Doing their best to prepare as best they can and go into the tournament with a clear mind.
- Wins and losses have been the least of his issues they’ve struggled with this season, it’s all the other issues related to Covid, health, shutdowns, individuality, academics.
- They’ve had a difficult year internally but this is a winning program. There’s nothing broken.
- They’ve got to figure out a way to score against Ole Miss. Had some good opportunities in the regular season game but couldn’t make shots.
- No decision yet on availability of injured players Couisnard and Woods.
- This is home, been here 9 years, not looking for another job, has given to the community, doesn’t talk contract with university officials during the season.
- The university knows where he stands, they know he’s had countless opportunities to talk to other schools and never did, this is his home, when season ends, he’ll have conversations. If he’s wanted, this is where he wants to call home.
- They have fixed things here once and he can fix it again.
- “When you build things without cheating, it takes time.”
“When you build things without cheating, it takes time.”
-First, I don’t believe for 1 minute that most schools that are successful cheat, secondly we were just hit with probation for a past coaches indiscretions regarding steering kids towards certain schools.
-Coach Martin has had 9 seasons of work to look over and the results are mediocre at best. One trip to the big dance in 9 years ain’t cutting it for a coach that makes 3 million a year. He recently mentioned that he puts building kids with character first and foremost. That being the case, why don’t you retire from coaching and get into motivational speaking or counseling. We pay you 3 million/year to win games and get to the postseason more than once every 9 seasons.
-Martin has also proven to be a terrible recruiter bringing in far too many project players who lack offensive skills. He also completely failed to use the Final 4 run as a spring board in improve recruiting.
-He fails yearly and signing the best players from the Palmetto state. Instead they opt to go to programs like Tennessee, Ole Miss and Alabama.
-Schools like Alabama & Arkansas are doing great things with younger coaches who’ve just recently taken over the respective programs.
-Lastly, our offenses under Martin have been atrocious more times than not. We continually lack outside shooting, solid Guard play and I please don’t get me started on our horrid Free Throw shooting over the years. It’s almost as if he could completely care less about practicing FT shooting or developing offensive skills. Of course when you target primarily project players that lack offensive skills, I guess you can’t really expect solid shooting teams.
♦It’s now time for Ray Tanner and the BOT to make the decision to move on and begin another chapter in Men’s basketball.