The South Carolina Gamecocks know how to make an entrance.
They’re in the Elite Eight for the first time ever, after they destroyed Baylor in an East regional semifinal on Friday, 70-50. I didn’t see this coming.
South Carolina is a No. 7 seed in this NCAA tournament. That’s not standard Elite Eight material. It has the nation’s No. 121 offense by adjusted efficiency. That’s not standard Elite Eight material, either. And it’s an SEC program not named “Kentucky” or “Florida.” That is definitely not standard Elite Eight material. So, yeah, this is a surprise.
We should have seen this coming, and also, no, we shouldn’t have.
The Gamecocks have been elite on their own end of the floor all season. The same opponent-adjusted efficiency stat that doesn’t like their offense says their defense is the No. 4 unit in the country. Frank Martin’s got a long history of coaching good defenses, dating back to his stint at Kansas State from 2007-2012. The Cocks were good defenders the last two seasons, and they leveled up to great this season.
That’s why we should’ve seen this coming.
They started their tournament run by going up against Marquette, a team that’s basically their inverse: elite offense, mediocre defense. The Gamecock defense won out, but it wasn’t just the defense. South Carolina had its third-best efficient game of the season, in terms of per-possession efficiency. It scored 93 points, five off its season high. This was after three lousy offensive games in a row against bad SEC teams.
That’s why we shouldn’t have seen this coming.
Except then, South Carolina also beat Duke. The region’s No. 2 seed and one of the most talented rosters in recent college basketball memory, and the team that turned white-hot in time to win the ACC tournament. And it wasn’t even that close: an 88-81 decision, after the Gamecocks kept the Blue Devils at arm’s length for much of the second half. They took over as that game wore on and cruised home.
So, by this point, maybe we should have seen this coming after all.
The Gamecocks did to Baylor what they have done to the opposition all season. They slowed the Bears’ offense to a halt. Baylor’s top-20 offense mustered a 33 percent effective shooting rate, by far its worst figure of the year. Its players were flummoxed all night against a defense that never gave them time to operate.
South Carolina is one of a few teams making a new case for SEC basketball.
I am not using one team’s tournament success to validate an entire conference’s season. That’s not good methodology. But South Carolina is making a good case that the level of competition in the SEC this season wasn’t bad at all.
By Ken Pomeroy’s opponent-adjusted efficiency (there’s that stat again), the SEC was the No. 5 conference in the country this year. It was just a hair worse than the Big Ten in a down year, and it was a fair bit better than the Pac-12.
The SEC hasn’t been particularly exciting for a long time now, and its lack of consistent programs beyond Kentucky and Florida has made it a constant punchline.
But something about the SEC stands out this year: defense. South Carolina is one of four SEC teams that places in the top 10 nationally in adjusted efficiency. Kentucky and Florida are two of the others, and Alabama (which can’t play offense) is the fourth.
South Carolina scored 181 points in its opening-weekend victories. Against Baylor, its offense was good but ordinary. But the defense was suffocating, just like it usually is. That’s what top-tier SEC teams (and Alabama) are good at nowadays.
Kentucky and Florida both have a chance to join South Carolina in the Elite Eight (we’ll know more about this later on Friday). There’s a pretty good chance the SEC places at least two teams among the final eight. If it does, defense will have been the key for both. That seems like a good business model for college hoops’ most ridiculed league.