In his 27 years of coaching basketball, Frank Martin has encountered few challenges he could not stare down.
It’s
his trademark, his imprint on the collective consciousness of college
basketball. It’s also representative of the mentality that carried him
through successful stints as a high school coach and, years down the
road, at Kansas State. Now, the 46-year-old Miami native is settling in
at South Carolina, a 1,100-mile relocation to a program that has
wallowed in on-court inconsistency since the early 1970s.
Don’t expect him to blink at that. He hasn't yet.
“He
has, sometimes, a larger-than-life personality. I’ve often heard him
referred to as the guy with ‘The Stare,’” said Ole Miss coach Andy
Kennedy, who coached with Martin under Bob Huggins at Cincinnati. "I
think in this day and age, as it relates to South Carolina, they need a
personality such as Frank's."
Martin's basketball acumen will, at
least in the beginning, be tested more than his disposition in
Columbia, where he inherits not only a team that finished 2-14 in the
Southeastern Conference but one that will compete without many of its
top players from a year ago. The Gamecocks' best player, Malik Cooke,
graduated. Two of the top three returning scorers won't be returning at
all — Damontre Harris and Anthony Gill both transferred — while the
other, Bruce Ellington, may stick with the other larger-than-life
personality on campus, Steve Spurrier.
No, the talent is certainly not on par with the conference heavyweights.
Former
coach Darrin Horn left behind a tall task – one that many would shy
away from – but South Carolina athletic director Eric Hyman might have
found one of the few to look the problem right in the eye.
"Obviously,
one of the things he’s been really good at is recruiting and he infused
that [Kansas State] program with really good talent," Missouri coach
Frank Haith said. "But I think the one thing that stands out with Frank,
and I think that should not be overlooked, is his ability to coach his
guys up and get them to play at a certain level with intensity and
passion."
Martin will desperately need both of those intangibles
present and accounted for in the early going. It still might not be
enough.
In the Gamecocks’ division alone, Billy Donovan boasts
multiple national titles at Florida, Vanderbilt hoisted the 2012
conference tournament trophy and Missouri enters the fold fresh off a
top-5 finish during last year's regular season. And while South
Carolina's top returning scorer averaged just 6.8 points per game last
season, Kentucky has reloaded with more NBA-caliber talent validated by a
newly-stitched banner hanging from the rafters of Rupp Arena.
Frank
Martin has heard all the names, and he respects them immensely. His
optimism overflowed through the phone lines on Monday's teleconference
when he called the SEC "the most underrated league in the country."
He's well aware of the path ahead.
"Getting
them to understand the differences in how we’ll play, the structure,
the understanding, the trust is a new system – which is the most
important part because you’re asking players to change so they have to
trust in the change – that takes time," Martin said. "It just doesn’t
happen. That’s been the biggest challenge."
The Big 12 infusion into the SEC standings should, to some extent, lighten the burden.
Martin
knows Missouri and Texas A&M well from his time at Kansas State.
Arkansas coach Mike Anderson is one season removed from his own stint at
Missouri. Indeed, there were many familiar faces at the conference
coaches' meetings a month ago. But coaching fellowship won't prevent
league foes from readying themselves to keep South Carolina a conference
afterthought.
The only way the new Gamecocks coach is to truly
know the mettle of his young roster — and to accurately gauge his SEC
competition — will be to see it in live-game action on the typically
hostile nights in Rupp or Thompson-Boling Arena or the O’Connell Center.
"I
don’t care how many scouting reports I read, you don’t really have a
feel for teams and style of play completely off of film," he said. "You
feel it when you go in and compete against those teams and you see it
firsthand. You gotta go through it."
He'll go through it soon enough with this inexperienced squad. He'll take his lumps, too.
Martin
said that it wasn't until halfway through the first season that his
former Wildcats began to jell, to form the confidence in his
rough-and-tumble style that, as his career 117-54 record attests to, is
proven at the Division I level.
Although his new rivals may disagree, expect it to take even longer this time around.
"He
imposes his will from Day One. I’m sure he’s in the process of doing
that with the South Carolina program and I don’t have any doubts that
he’ll have that program winning and winning big soon," Kennedy said.
Kennedy's
glass-half-full approach for this South Carolina roster is likely a
product of the unknown, a consequence of blind prognostication.
Frank Martin, on the other hand, has seen the deterrents ahead.
But he won't take his eyes off them.
