South Carolina Basketball: National analyst drops Gamecocks way down in rankings despite SEC road win

South Carolina basketball bounced back from a tough week two weeks ago with a road win over Ole Miss following a Bye in the mid-week to stop their 2-game losing skid. The win over the Rebels kept many analysts from backing out of their support for the Gamecocks as a legitimate NCAA Tournament team.

However, for one national analyst, the convincing win in Oxford appears to have hurt Lamont Paris' team.

Andy Katz, a long-time national college basketball analyst who now works for NCAA.com, rocketed South Carolina basketball down his weekly Power-36 rankings this week.

After being ranked 25th following the team's losses to Auburn and LSU, the Gamecocks all of a sudden dropped 7 spots to #32 in Katz's rankings following the road win over NCAA Tournament hopeful Ole Miss. The 7-spot drop is tied for the largest of any team that still remains in the top-36 list.

The 7-spot drop is strange as several teams with similar resumes saw smaller drops (or no drop at all) despite losing last week. Florida stayed put at #20 despite a 1-1 week, Washington State moved down just one spot from 17 to 18 after a 1-1 week (including a loss to a bad Arizona State squad), Creighton stayed put at 15th despite losing to St. John's, and Texas Tech didn't move off of the #33 spot after a loss to an abysmal UCF group.

Katz's ranking punishment of the Gamecocks seems to be unique in the world of college basketball media. Other national analysts like Jon Rothstein, John Fanta, and Joe Lunardi all moved Carolina up in their rankings after the Quad-1/Quad-2 NET rankings victory (it was a Quad-1 at the time of the final buzzer but has flip-flopped back and forth over the 1/2 line since then). The AP poll and USA Today Coaches poll also moved USC up from 20th to 18th.

Lamont Paris and his South Carolina basketball squad will have a chance to force Katz to change his mind about them when they return to action on Wednesday night on the road against Texas A&M. The Gamecocks and Aggies will tip-off at 8:30 PM EST, and the game will be broadcast on the SEC Network.