High school teammates Carrera, Johnson reunite
With just days until the South Carolina men’s basketball team plays its first exhibition match of the season, coach Frank Martinis still waiting for his team to mature.
“When I get mad with my little son, he goes and sits in the corner and doesn’t speak to anyone,” Martin said. “We’ve got some of that going on right now. We’ve got to grow up from that age.”
In Martin’s second year at the helm of Gamecock basketball, he has definitively put his stamp on the program by bringing eight new names onto the roster this offseason. The immaturity the coach is concerned with is born from seven of those eight fresh faces being freshmen.
Despite Martin’s concerns about preparedness, he said he is happy with what he calls the team’s “personality.”
“They’re excited, they want to do well, they care. They speak to one another on the court,” Martin said. “As a whole, there’s a sense of unity, a sense of — a word that I use all the time — caring.”
With this year’s influx of youth, Brenton Williams is the only senior on the roster for the season. As one of the few players that has worked with Martin before, Williams said he has been impressed with the freshmen’s ability to learn the coach’s philosophies.
“I feel that the group that came in this year, they learned a lot quicker than the team did last year,” Williams said. “And I think that’s real positive.”
Williams will be joined in the backcourt by another upperclassman in December, when junior transfer Tyrone Johnson becomes eligible after coming to South Carolina from Villanova.
Even though he is new to the team, Johnson is not unfamiliar to every Gamecock. At Montrose Christian Academy in Maryland, he teamed up with sophomore forward Michael Carrera to win the 2011 National High School Invitational.
Johnson said that the chemistry he already has with the fiery Venezuelan will benefit the team when he becomes eligible.
“One thing about Mike is that he’s always going to have your back,” Johnson said. “Playing with him in high school, and now here, it’s the same thing. So when me and Mike are on the court together, and also with these other guys, we’re very hyped about playing.”
Known for his enthusiasm on the court, Carrera was a force on the boards when healthy last year. But aside from Carrera, the team struggled in the rebounding category last season.
With a noticeably taller roster entering the 2013 campaign, Martin thinks the Gamecocks have the ability to put their rebounding troubles behind them.
“I think we’re a better rebounding team than we were a year ago,” Martin said. “I was concerned about us rebounding the ball because we’re so young.”
With preseason practice drawing to a close and exhibition play looming, Martin still has concerns about his young squad, saying his team “might set the all-time record for points given up in the month of November.”
But all jokes aside, the second-year coach is ready to pit his players against a team in different colored jerseys when USC-Aiken comes to Colonial Life Arena Sunday for an exhibition game.
“We’ve got to start playing games,” Martin said. “So the reward is not either me patting them on the back or me getting on them for doing something wrong, the reward is now winning and losing.”