COLUMBIA - The effects of a “lost weekend” for University of South Carolina men’s basketball were evident Monday on the face of senior guard Zambolist “Buck” Fredrick.

The former “Mr. South Carolina Basketball” out of Calhoun County and second-team All-Southeastern Conference selection was the de facto team spokesman as the long Gamecock sent to briefly take questions from the media at the practice facility. Though remaining upbeat publicly about extending his college career another game at 7 p.m. tonight against Davidson College in the first-round of the National Invitational Tournament, Fredrick could not hide the sting of missing out on his last chance to compete in the NCAA tournament.

“We’re good,” he said. “We’re a little disappointed, but we’ve just got to get ready to play tomorrow. It’s a quick turnaround from expecting to get in and not getting in to playing in the NIT and getting yourself ready for the next game. But we’re going to take care of that. We’ll be ready. I think we’re ready now, but they’re a couple of people still disappointed. But you’ve got to shrug that off and get ready for the next game.”

The word “disappointed” was used several times by Fredrick during the 4 1/2 minute Q and A session. Despite winning 21 games and co-sharing Southeastern Conference East Division championship honors with Tennessee, the Gamecocks still found themselves coming up short in the eyes of the NCAA selection committee.

Lopsided late-season losses to Vanderbilt, Tennessee and eventual SEC tournament champion Mississippi State, a lack of perceived quality wins as well as the low perception the conference received all season proved insurmountable for the Gamecocks.

Nevertheless, Fredrick still classifies this past season as a great success.

“We proved a lot of people wrong, finishing tied for first in our side of the Division,” Fredrick said. “There’s a lot of positives to take from this year. If we had gotten a couple of wins here and there, handed a couple of situations differently, we would have been playing in the tournament. But you can’t take anything away from what we did this year. We played good basketball, got (21) wins, less than 10 losses. So I think that’s a good year.

Where one postseason window of opportunity was officially closed Sunday evening, another opened in the NIT. Once the Gamecocks received the bid, Fredrick said he wasted little time changing his priorities.

“Of course we’re disappointed about not getting a bid, but just as a man and a person, you’ve got to move on,” Fredrick said. “We look forward to the opportunity you did get. There’s a lot of teams that didn’t get this opportunity here, so we’re just ready to get down to this.

“Our goal is to win the NIT. I don’t know if you can prove that you belong in the tournament by doing so. But we’re just proving to ourselves that we’re a good basketball team and we’ve still got a month of basketball to play.”

How the Gamecocks fare in the first five minutes against the Wildcats will determine if they’re ready to play, according to Fredrick. He believes facing a team with a player of the stature of Davidson junior guard Stephen Curry on national television (ESPN2 - Channel 27 on Time Warner Cable) should provide enough motivation for the Gamecocks to play well.

“Not getting in is a disappointment,” Fredrick said. “But seeing that you get to play that type of player, everybody is going to be watching. It’s a nationally-televised game. As a player, you’ve got to get up for it. Even if you’re disappointed at the lowest level. It didn’t matter whom we played. Just as long as we get to play another game, step out on the floor. I’m trying to make it last as long as we can because this is my last season and I want to go out winning.”

When asked how USC will try to slow down the nation’s leading scorer (Curry is averaging 28.6 points per game), Fredrick spoke from experience as the Palmetto State’s all-time leading scorer.

“The same way you guard everybody else - stay close to him, make it tough for him, make him do things he doesn’t want to do,” he said. “Contest all his shots and don’t try to give him one. Make all his shots contested shots.”

Fredrick is very cognizant of the finality of the postseason, that one more loss will mark the end of his college career. While already looking ahead to the future, which he insists will include basketball, Fredrick’s hope for the immediate future is to advance to the next round.

“Everybody I know knows I’m going to play basketball after this,” he said. “Whether it’s league or overseas, but you never know. They’re going to keep supporting me regardless. We don’t expect tomorrow to be our finale. We don’t think like that. We just take it a day at a time. All of us are like that. We don’t really put emphasis on one game. We just take it for what it’s worth.”

Two-Sport Doubleheader

The University of South Carolina and Davidson College will compete in a doubleheader of sorts tonight in Columbia. The two baseball squads will square off at Carolina Stadium at 7 p.m., while simultaneously the men’s basketball teams will meet in an ESPN2 nationally-televised game about a mile away at the Colonial Life Arena.

After ESPN determined the start time of the men’s basketball game, the South Carolina Athletics Department considered moving the first pitch of the baseball contest to earlier in the day to accommodate fans who would like to see both contests. Several logistical factors, including academic concerns for both teams, additional time needed to get the playing field ready following the recent rains, event staffing issues for security, ticket operations and concessionaires, and parking availability in the business lots around the baseball stadium, prevented any change.

Tickets for the opening round of the postseason NIT are on sale now. Ticket prices stand at $18 for lower bowl seats, $15 for upper bowl seats and $4 dollars for student tickets. Fans can buy tickets online at www.GamecocksOnline.com, by visiting the Gamecock ticket office at Colonial Life Arena or by calling 1-800-4SC-FANS.

T&D Senior Sports Writer Thomas Grant Jr. can be reached by e-mail at tgrant@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5547. Discuss this and other stories on-line at TheTandD.com.

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