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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Fogler Returns South Carolina To Good Old Days

Don Markus Baltimore Sun

There is a lot of reminiscing these days in Columbia, S.C., talking about “The Coach” and the glory years of South Carolina basketball. But of all the great seasons Frank McGuire had in building the Gamecocks into an Atlantic Coast Conference power, none were quite like the one Eddie Fogler’s team is having right now.

An ignominious 5-5 start that included home losses to North Carolina-Asheville and Charleston Southern seems as distant a memory as the 1969-70 season, when the Gamecocks ran the table by winning all 14 of their ACC games. This year’s team has won 11 in a row and all 10 of its Southeastern Conference games.

The most recent victory came Tuesday night at the raucous Carolina Coliseum, on the court of the Frank McGuire Arena, when South Carolina overcame a seven-point first-half deficit and then blew an 11-point second-half lead before putting away third-ranked Kentucky in overtime, 84-79.

Though it wasn’t the same Kentucky team that Fogler recently called “the cream of the crop” in the SEC the once-deep Wildcats are down to nine players because of injuries and have lost All-America Derek Anderson for the season with a knee injury - the 19th-ranked Gamecocks are a lock to make the school’s first NCAA Tournament since 1988-89 and only the second since 1972-73.

“I think we’re just reaching a level of consistency,” senior guard Larry Davis said. “We want to keep our composure and not get overconfident. We’re looking for respect.”

That has been a long time coming for South Carolina. After the legendary McGuire retired in 1980, the Gamecocks had brief periods of success with Bill Foster and George Felton. But the program started going downhill at the end of the 1990-91 season, when an 18-5 start turned into a 20-13 finish. Felton was forced out and Steve Newton came in for the first two of what would be four straight losing seasons.

Enter Fogler, a former point guard and assistant coach at North Carolina who had turned around Wichita State and Vanderbilt. After South Carolina alum Bobby Cremins accepted the job and then did an about-face and stayed at Georgia Tech three years ago, Fogler took the job. Being familiar with the territory helped.

“The background I had helped me,” he said. “It’s not like something I had never been to or seen. I knew we could win here.”

His connections to Chapel Hill helped get an unhappy Davis. He had set South Carolina high school scoring records by averaging 44 points a game as a senior in Denmark, S.C., but he was playing behind Donald Williams on North Carolina’s national championship team in 1993. Now nine of the 12 players are from the state.

Many of the team’s fans go back to the days of the late McGuire.

“I would say most of our Tip-Off Club members are in the 60s or 70s,” Fogler said. “And Coach McGuire still lives in many ways.”