Hey, guess what?
It’s time to start talking basketball. Well, it’s never NOT been time to talk about basketball, because that time is all the time for me. But we are getting closer to the basketball season, and I’ve already started prepping for the SEC Conference Previews. That means it’s also time to look at the non-conference schedule.
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The Full Non-Conference Schedule:
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October 24th — vs. Kansas State (exhibition)
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November 3rd — at Howard Bison | Preview
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November 7th — vs. Southeast Missouri | Preview
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November 12th — vs Minnesota | Preview
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November 17th — vs Prairie View A&M | Preview
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November 20th — vs South Dakota | Preview
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November 25th — vs South Carolina State
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November 28th — vs Cleveland State
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December 2nd — at Notre Dame
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December 7th — vs Kansas (in Kansas City, MO)
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December 11th — vs Alabama State
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December 14th — vs Bethune-Cookman
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December 22nd — vs Illinois (in St. Louis, MO)
These previews aren’t here to re-hash the argument over whether Dennis Gates put together a good schedule or not. It’s simply to talk about the opponents, and what can be expected. We’re also not going to use these to preview Kansas State since it’s an exhibition. We’ll do a quick K-State preview before the game, but for now we’re going to focus on the games that matter.
Let’s Meet: South Carolina State Bulldogs
Located in the blossoming metropolis of Orangeburg, South Carolina, SC State is a historically black land grant university founded in 1872. The school is a member of the MEAC, or Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, and has been since its founding in 1970. The league officially formed and began competition in 1971, and it joined NCAA’s division one the same year.
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Since then the school has made 5 NCAA tournaments, but none since 2003. They play a lot of non-conference road games, but not to the degree of some of the SWAC schools. In the past 10 years they’ve played 97 non-conference road games, they’ve won just 8 of them, and none of those 8 were against a high major opponent. In fact in school history, South Carolina State has never beaten an SEC school on the road. That’s 33 road games against the SEC, and 33 losses. South Carolina has 22 of those meetings.
The last time SC State beat a high major team was in 2004 when they took down Miami on the road. Last year they played three high majors on the road, South Carolina, Georgia and Xavier. They lost all three. Although the Xavier loss was only by three points.
Head Coach | Erik Martin | 4th Season 39-57
When Erik Martin took the South Carolina State job I’m sure more than a few people shrugged. The longtime Bob Huggins assistant had spent his college years playing for Huggins at Cincinnati, and 16 years on the bench as his assistant. Assistants leave all the time, especially when they’re taking a head coaching job, for Martin is was time. The job at South Carolina State has chewed through plenty of coaches, the program has just two 20 win seasons since the year 2000, and Martin has one of them.
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After an opening season finishing 5-26, and 345 in KenPom, Martin’s team improved to 14-18 and 301st in KenPom two years ago. Then came last season when they finished 192nd in KenPom and 20-13 overall, tying for the regular season league championship. Nearly all of the improvement has been the buy-in on the defensive end, as the Bulldogs have jumped from 352nd in the country in Martin’s first season to 132nd last season.
Offensively they attack the offensive glass and get to the free throw line. Martin has proven he can build his program up to compete within the MEAC.
Series History | Missouri leads 2-0
You could be forgiven for not remembering the matchup between South Carolina State and Missouri two years ago, after all it was looking disastrous in the very early goings. SC State led 29-13 with 12 or so minutes to go before Mizzou lit up an 18-2 run. In fact the Bulldogs still led at halftime 37-35, but a 28-2 run over the first 9 minutes in the second half put the game out of any doubt. Sean East led the way with 21 points, and it was the fourth win of the season for the Tigers. They were coming off the heels of the home loss to Jackson State and needed a positive momentum swing. Any positive momentum did go out the door fairly quickly as they won just 4 more games the rest of the season.
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That wasn’t the case the first time these two teams played. Back in 2012, the 2012-13 Missouri basketball housed SC State 102-51, behind 16 points from Earnest Ross, and four others in double figures. That was Missouri’s first season in the SEC, they started 10-1, and this was one of the 10.
What about the team now?
Transfer portal impact level = high. Drayton Jones, a 6’10 post is at Butler after averaging 13 points and 5.5 rebounds last year. Mitchel Taylor, a point guard who averaged 8.5 points a game is now at UNC-Asheville. Wilson Dubinsky, another 8 pp scorer and combo guard, will suit up for Marshall this year. They also lost Michael teal, Caleb McCarty, and Roko Maric to the portal, although the first two were merely rotational players and Maric only saw action in 6 games.
Graduation took Omar Croskey and Davion Everett, two double digit scorers.
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In making up for those losses, Martin has signed 8 newcomers to the roster, only one player showed up on EvanMiya.com’s transfer portal rankings, Cameron Clark from Cal State Bakersfield. Another transfer, Kenny Gaines, came from Division 2 USC-Beaufort. Then there is 7’0 post Tim Okojie, 6’6 combo forward Chris Parker and 6’5 wing Owen Bronston, all former JUCO players.
The rest of the incoming class are freshmen.
It’s a bit of a mixed bag. And at this stage, there’s a lot of different ways it could go. But I think you can trust Martin to at least be competitive in the MEAC regardless of how his night goes in Columbia this November.
