South Carolina Basketball: Ranking the best head coaches in Gamecock history
By Kevin Miller
South Carolina Basketball’s No. 4 Greatest Head Coach of All-Time:
Eddie Fogler
The unenviable job of following Steve Newton as the head coach of the South Carolina basketball program went to Vanderbilt’s Eddie Fogler (1993-2001). After winning the SEC at Vandy the season prior, Fogler spent two seasons rebuilding the bottom-dwelling Gamecocks essentially from the ground up before winning 19 games in his third year with the program.
The following two seasons were two of the best years in Gamecock history. 24-8 and 23-8 records led Carolina to the reward of being selected as an NCAA Tournament 2-seed and a 3-seed, respectively, but Fogler’s teams bowed out in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in both years with losses to Coppin State and Richmond.
Fogler and the Gamecocks won the program’s only SEC regular season championship in the 1996-1997 season. That team had two All-Americans (BJ McKie and Larry Davis) and was the first team to ever put three guards on the first team of an all-conference squad (McKie, Davis, and Melvin Watson).
The end of the Fogler regime was not what Gamecock fans would have hoped. Fogler did not adapt well after losing his more experienced players to graduation, and his recruiting wasn’t good enough to fill in the gaps. He resigned after three-straight seasons winning 15 or fewer games.