'We thought we could beat anybody in the country': How South Carolina basketball won the 1997 SEC title

Melvin Watson didn’t understand what just came out of South Carolina head coach Eddie Fogler’s mouth.

Sitting on the bench in 1995 at Alabama in a game the Gamecocks ultimately lost by 32 points, Fogler looked at him and just said, “It’s OK. We’re going to be good,” Watson remembers.

To a competitor, it was jarring. But Watson didn’t know the foundation Fogler and his staff were laying.

Watson didn’t know about the players coming down the pipeline that two years later would ultimately lead to South Carolina’s first SEC championship.

“At the time I’m like, ‘We’re down 42 coach, what are you talking about?” Watson said. “At that time, coach Fogler saw the vision. He put it in place and did it with South Carolina kids. It just took off.”

South Carolina will honor its 1997 SEC Title winning team Saturday as part of Legends Weekend, a fitting honor on the 25th anniversary of one of the greatest teams in program history.

Building a championship roster

Three years prior to winning the title—before 15 league wins, before beating Kentucky at Kentucky to win it all and before one of the winningest stretches in program history—Eddie Fogler inherited a program new to the SEC with just eight combined league wins in two seasons.

He quickly got to work building a fence around South Carolina, trying to keep a run of great players home.

“You try and at least put some barriers down in your neck of the woods and lock down the home turf,” then-Gamecock assistant John Cooper said.

First up was Watson, originally from Charleston but playing in New England, paired with Ryan Stack in the same class.

“We knew we had the keys and the pieces of the puzzle to have a good team. It was adding a few more pieces and building the chemistry,” Stack said.

Then came the behemoth.

The Gamecocks were not only able to land South Carolina native Larry Davis transferring in from North Carolina, bringing in Bud Johnson, Nate Wilbourne and Will Gallman.

The lynchpin, though, was 25 minutes down the road in the form of All-American BJ McKie.

“He was recruited coast to coast,” Fogler said. “BJ picking the University of South Carolina was real meaningful. They were real meaningful but that one particularly was very meaningful.”

The Gamecocks ultimately brought in a top-five recruiting class largely built without having to leave the state’s borders.

“Up until that time it wasn’t very fashionable for guys in the state of South Carolina to stay. A lot of guys left to go other places prior to that,” assistant coach Rick Callahan said. “It was critical to keep as many in-state and make the right decisions on the ones we really targeted and wanted.”

Forming a bond for the Gamecocks

Talent is one thing, but if it doesn’t mesh well together it’s all for not.

The Gamecocks were bringing in great players in spades but needed to have it gel or any momentum generated in recruiting would go to waste.

So, after a 1995-96 season that saw an NIT berth and two wins in it, Fogler took his program to Europe for a weeks-long exhibition slate.

There everyone—from players to trainers to coaches to managers—got a chance to try and gel before a pivotal season. 

Almost every player who spoke to GamecockCentral for the story said that trip was beneficial, and it did well bringing the star players together.

Watson and McKie were still feeling each other out, and Watson even admitted to wanting to transfer out once McKie committed feeling like he was going to lose his starting job.

Sensing that, Fogler paired the two as roommates on the trip and they became two parts to one of the best Gamecock backcourts ever.

“We stayed up for five hours and just talked. I really got a chance to know him and realized he’s a great dude to be around,” Watson said. “It took off from there. He’s my little brother, man.”

The players-only meeting that turned a season around

Gelling is great, but if you watched the Gamecocks play through five games it certainly didn’t show.

South Carolina split its first 10 games that year with losses at home to UNC Asheville and Charleston Southern over a nine-day span.

“It was one of one of the worst Christmases we had,” Callahan said.

But things changed quickly after a players-only meeting. In it, as the Gamecocks tried to stop the bleeding, Hagen Rouse spoke up and delivered what Callahan called one of the “all-time great” locker room speeches.

“Some players were called out, me in particular, Larry in particular,” McKie said. “As men sometimes you have to look yourself in the mirror and accept some faults. We really did that. That’s when we started turning things around.” 

Things pivoted almost immediately after the meeting.

“I remember coming out of there and the looks on some of their faces I could tell something happened that was important,” athletic trainer Jeff Parsons said. “I didn’t know how it was going to go but when we came out to beat Furman it was like a totally different team.”

From there, practices got better. The competitiveness was unmatched to the point of skirmishes during and what was a talented team on paper started to live up to its potential.

“Hell, me and Jeff Lebo were practicing. That was during the time we could practice. It would be fun because we were going after those guys,” Cooper said. “We were young enough to be able to play and go at them. Practices were still high tilt and competitive.”

After that team meeting, the Gamecocks didn’t lose a game for over a month.

South Carolina’s streak

What followed was a 12-game win streak as the Gamecocks found ways to not only win but do it in a dramatic fashion. They’d blow past Auburn and Tennessee to start league play before winning on the road at Mississippi State.

“At that point, I thought man, this is a great basketball team and they just have to get it together,” Parsons said.

Things became crystal clear on a Wednesday night at Florida where the Gamecocks, trailing by 16 points with five to play, rallied and beat the Gators 80-79.

“That was the turning point for everyone,” Stack said. “Like we are good. We knew what we needed to do to win.”

Larry Davis had a big half, scoring 13 of 18 points and led the Gamecocks to a win with McKie getting the game-winner.

“Larry Davis was the best player in the country that night,” Parson said.

But it’s one thing to do it against Florida. If the Gamecocks were going to win a title, they had to prove it against the big boy: Kentucky.

Big Tuesday

John Combs can remember about the game was the buzz from the crowd.

Combs, then a manager of the team, can remember walking out from the tunnel before South Carolina hosted No. 3 Kentucky, the reigning national champs, and seeing Darius Rucker and the rest of Hootie and the Blowfish courtside next to the likes of Dick Vitale, Brad Nessler, Sterling Sharpe and George Rogers.

If there was ever a time for the Gamecocks to make a statement, it was now.

“To go out and prove it on a big stage like that with first place in the SEC on the line and everybody in college basketball was going to be there to watch it?” Combs said. “Tuesday on ESPN at nine o’clock, that’s where it was with college basketball.”

On the inside, the Gamecocks knew what they had but to the outside world, they were still relatively unknown. A win over the reigning national champions would not only give them the upper hand in the title race but prove to the rest of the college basketball world they were for real.

They did, beating Kentucky by five in overtime, a statement win for the best team in the SEC that year.

“We knew we could compete with a team like that but you have to go out and prove it,” Combs said. “That was such a big game. That let everybody else know we were legitimate.”

A court storming ensued and the celebration in a college town followed.

“It’s one of the best games I’ve been involved in,” Watson said.

‘They were going to pull through’

Parsons still remembers it vividly.

Driving back on a dark bus home from Georgia, Parsons and the rest of the Gamecocks were coming to terms with the unthinkable.

They had just lost what Stack called a “brutal” game at Georgia by three points, snapping a 12-game win streak and giving Kentucky life in the conference race.

Sitting there, he turned and saw the hydra backcourt of McKie, Watson and Davis, heads together, talking. It was then he knew that loss would be the exception and not the rule.

“I remember seeing those three guys together and knowing it was going to be difficult for a day or so but they were going to pull through. Any time you saw those three together they were going to make it right.”

But it didn’t get any easier; up next was a road tilt against a top 10 Cincinnati team.

“It was my scout and I just remember putting them up on the board. At that time, man, every guy I put up on the board was basically 200 pounds,” Cooper said. “That wasn’t the normal case at that time. It spoke to the physicality and who they were in their program.”

But, as it was with that group, it didn’t matter.

Stack drilled three after three and the Gamecocks cruised to a 14-point win. It was the same week he got contacts for the first time.

“That helped,” he said. “ When you can see that helps.”

A Gamecock team that could have easily let one loss slip to two or even three didn’t, responding with their third win over a ranked opponent.

“We thought we could beat anybody in the country,” McKie said.

Rapture at Rupp

The season motored along from there with four more wins following the drubbing of the Bearcats, including a win at home to Vanderbilt to clinch at least a piece of the regular-season title.

But things got much more difficult. If the Gamecocks were going to win it outright they’d have to do it against Kentucky in Rupp Arena on senior day.

“We were greedy,” Watson said. “We weren’t worried about it being their senior night…It wasn’t us trying to adjust to them it was them adjusting to us.”

That iteration of Kentucky had six future NBA players on it, led by Ron Mercer, and to make matters worse the Wildcats hadn’t lost on a senior night since 1964, a span of 33 years.

But it didn’t matter to the Gamecocks. They won a dogfight while holding Kentucky to just 66 points en route to the program’s first regular-season title.

“You could hear a pin drop in that place. I remember some of our guys cheering,” Callahan said. “This big 6-foot-7 state trooper came out, pushed the curtains back and said, ‘That’ll be enough of that.’”

It was the fruits of Fogler’s labor and he made a statement doing it. He took down the league’s top dog twice to win it.

“It’s nice to play a Sunday game. I knew we had a shot. We had three very strong officials on the road at Kentucky,” Fogler said. “That was kind of fun walking off that court after beating Kentucky.”

Stack added: “I think BJ stole the game ball. We’re trying to get off the court as quick as we could. They were throwing coins and trash and spitting on us. That was probably the only time in my life I’ve ever been happy to be mistreated.”

It was a culmination of three years of hard work. The Gamecocks celebrated the euphoria of winning a title with a throng of fans greeting them in Columbia when they touched down that night.

“That’s what you want to live for when you’re growing up and going to college,” McKie said. “You want to go out and feel special; you want to go out and be treated like a local celebrity. That’s what you work hard for. For us to be a part of that, it was a very special time for us and Gamecock athletics and the city of Columbia.”

Etching a place in South Carolina history

It was an unceremonious first-round exit in the NCAA Tournament to No. 15 seed Coppin State. But that shouldn’t discredit the only SEC Title the men’s program has to date.

A team made up of South Carolina natives, held together by a players-only meeting and savvy veteran leadership rolled through team after team en route to one of the biggest achievements in program history.

“If you consider going 15-1 in that league as good as it was, beating Kentucky twice, winning the league outright,” Combs said. “I think it’s got to be a discussion of one of the best basketball teams in South Carolina history.”

The Gamecocks have put together good teams since—most notably the Final Four one from 2017—but none have come close to achieving in the SEC at the same level.

Fogler has since retired but all three assistants—Callahan (Monmouth), Cooper (SMU), Jeff Lebo (UNC)—are still in coaching and it’s spawn numerous high school head coaches, athletic directors and Division I assistants from the team.

“I do know we have a spot in South Carolina basketball history as being one of the best teams of all time,” McKie said.

So Fogler was right when he told Watson all those years ago the Gamecocks were going to be OK.

“It was a great time to be there. It was a great time to be at South Carolina. The whole state rallied around us,” Callahan said. “It was probably one of the greatest highlights I had as a coach.”