For yet another year, South Carolina men’s basketball will be absent from March Madness, and the status of coach Frank Martin is increasingly in doubt. As the 2021-22 campaign has been a very up and down time to watch the Gamecocks, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to look back on some better days and commemorate the fifth anniversary of 2017’s wildly fun and wildly unexpected Final Four run.
The setup
South Carolina entered the 2016-17 season on a note of promise and with the NCAA Tournament top of mind, as the Gamecocks compiled a 25-9 (11-7 SEC) mark in the previous year and reached the second round of the NIT.