South Carolina Basketball: 7 candidates to replace Frank Martin as head coach
By Joey Loose
After a decade with the Gamecocks, Frank Martin has been fired by South Carolina Basketball after ten years as their head coach. The native of Florida led the Gamecocks to the single-most successful season in program history during his tenure, but the results simply weren’t there, costing him his job in the end.
A graduate of Florida International, Martin’s coaching career began at the high school level in Miami, spending time at three different schools in the area. His jump to collegiate coaching came in 2000 with a stint as an assistant at Northeastern in Massachusetts. Four years later, he joined Bob Huggins’ staff at Cincinnati, eventually following him to Kansas State a few seasons later.
When Huggins departed for West Virginia in 2007, Martin was named head coach of the Wildcats. Over the course of the next five years, he had an impressive stint at Kansas State, leading the program to four NCAA Tournaments, and four straight finishes above .500 in the Big 12. He recruited star Michael Beasley to the program and later led the Wildcats to an Elite Eight run in 2010, the second-most impressive season of his collegiate coaching career.
South Carolina came calling in 2012, with Martin taking over a program that hadn’t done much in the SEC in basketball. The conference belonged almost solely to Florida and Kentucky, who at that time had combined to win three of the last seven national titles. Martin didn’t exactly turn South Carolina into a perennial contender in the conference, but he did have some inspiring success.
After an NIT bid and third place finished in the SEC in 2016, Martin’s team in 2017 marked his first (and only) Gamecocks squad to make the NCAA Tournament. As impressive as the appearance was, his Gamecocks were ready for March Madness, advancing all the way to the Final Four as a 7-seed, with an upset of Duke along the way.
Unfortunately, that was the lone highlight for Martin, which is likely part of what led to his firing after ten seasons. He had some solid years after that, but never good enough for postseason contention. The Gamecocks finished top 6 in the SEC in three of his last four seasons but were never again an NCAA Tournament team and it wasn’t good enough for him to earn an eleventh year in Columbia.
South Carolina isn’t a high-level power conference job, but it’s still a job in the SEC. Martin took this program to its first Final Four and there’s no reason the next head coach can’t take the Gamecocks to other levels of success, perhaps on a more consistent basis. With several SEC jobs opening up this month, the competition will be fierce, but we’ve narrowed it down and will be examining a handful of candidates for this job. We proceed alphabetically.