Gamecocks Coach Welcomes Stevenson After Getting Beat by Him

Frank Martin tried to land the shooting guard last year when he transferred out of Wichita State.

Dan Raley | Apr 18, 2021

Frank Martin and Erik Stevenson should get along well.

The intense South Carolina basketball coach and the well-traveled shooting guard.

A pair of hard-nosed guys.

Both coming off tough seasons, 6-15 and 5-21, respectively.

Each looking for personal redemption.

Four years after a Final Four appearance, Martin watched his reputation take a healthy dip once his SEC team bottomed out.

Stevenson, after two seasons at Wichita State, excited UW basketball followers no end as this big-time shooter only to go 0-for-2020-21.

Now these two are together in Columbia, South Carolina, eager to help each other turn themselves around in the basketball world.

Martin couldn't say enough complimentary things about Stevenson, someone he tried to bring in as a transfer a year ago and a guy he game-planned against in 2019 when the Gamecocks played Wichita State in the Cancun Challenge.

In the holiday event in Mexico, Stevenson scored a game-high 19 points for the Shockers in a 70-47 rout of South Carolina. Martin hasn't forgotten the beating and who was responsible.

“Erik Stevenson is someone we recruited a year ago when he was leaving Wichita State," the South Carolina coach told GamecocksCentral. "He’s another ball hawk, a guy who can shoot. ... Erik’s a dynamic personality; he’s aggressive. I know this, when we were getting ready to play Wichita State in Cancun I was watching him on film and was like, ‘I like this guy.’ Then we went out and played and he single-handedly destroyed us and created the mindset and tempo of the game in a game we had no chance to win."

Martin made a bid for the guard's services when he became available in the transfer portal last year, but Stevenson decided it was best to return to the Northwest and play for the Huskies.

"We tried to recruit him a year ago and he wanted to go home," Martin said. "Obviously going home didn’t work out the way he planned. He was as excited as excited can be when we called this time around."

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Published Apr 18, 2021

DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.