South Carolina basketball: what's next entering the SEC Tournament

James Reese knows he only has one guaranteed game left in his college career and at South Carolina.  

Entering the SEC Tournament with no eligibility on the other side of it, Reese and the Gamecocks know how vital that four-day stretch in Tampa will be if the Gamecocks want to play in any tournament past this weekend.

“I mean, me personally, I’m balls to the wall and putting everything on the floor. I don’t have any more second chances or an extra year. That’s what I’m going to relay to the team,” Reese said.

“Not just for me but for the team. We put in all this work this summer. We have two guys, me and AJ, who came here for this. I’m going to let them know to play balls to the wall for me and I’m going to do the same for them. I want to go out with a bang.”

This means the next few days for the Gamecocks are incredibly important if the Gamecocks want to make Reese and AJ Wilson’s final few weeks of college basketball memorable.

South Carolina’s been a solid team this year, rattling off 18 wins with nine in the SEC. It’s coming off a year where it won just six, four in the league.

But right now South Carolina is on the outside looking in and will likely need to win the conference tournament to make the NCAA one. A win or two in the tournament could help solidify an NIT berth.

But that doesn’t happen if the Gamecocks’ don’t continue to improve on things they’ve struggled with before going to Tampa.

“We got to make shots,” Jermaine Couisnard said. “We have to keep working and getting in the gym and shooting balls.”

The Gamecocks rank near the bottom in most offensive categories in 18 league games, last in offensive efficiency and effective field goal percentage.

“I feel like that’s all it is. Certain people have games where they’re not making them so they get down on themselves. It’s my job to give them the ball. I tell the guys all the time if I hit you and you’re wide open shoot it,” Couisnard said.

“Don’t hesitate. If you miss, you miss. It’s basketball. I know all the guards work every day on shooting the ball consistently. I keep telling them it’s going to fall, it’s got to fall, so keep shooting.”  

They’ve been good defensively, though. They’re in the top half of the SEC in nearly every category and top 30 nationally in defensive efficiency, but right now they just need to find more consistency offensively.

“We have to put two halves together,” Reese said. “We have to stay consistent throughout the whole game, and we got better at it but we have to put together two halves of basketball offensively and defensively. I feel like that’ll be the turning point for us because we’re so great defensively.”

It’s a tough match-up in the first round against a Mississippi State team the Gamecocks split a season series with.

The Bulldogs come to the tournament having lost seven of their last 10 games, 3-4 in the last seven. South Carolina is 5-5 in the last 10 but 5-2 in the last seven.

“I’m at peace with this team. This team is a good team, man. We don’t finish 9-9 and somewhere in the middle of the pack after overcoming some of the issues we had this year,” Frank Martin said.

“We’re in a good place. We just need to separate. Not from each other but from the regular season. The regular season is really, really hard. Then use the next 48 hours to get our emotions of winning and losing and this team or that team out of the way. Then be excited about the next opportunity, which is Thursday.”