Scott Davis: If you’re not devastated...

GamecockCentral.com columnist Scott Davis, who has followed USC sports for more than 30 years, provides commentary from the perspective of a Gamecocks fan. You can follow Scott on Twitter at @scdonfire.

Let me tell you a couple of stories about South Carolina basketball.

In 1994, I zipped out of family Thanksgiving celebrations to attend the Gamecocks’ basketball game against UNC-Asheville the day after Turkey Day. “Are you really leaving?” my poor Mom asked me as I zipped up my travel bag.

I was.

Just about the only people present in old Carolina Coliseum that night were me, my old college roommate and, yes, Baseline Jesus (then, as always, a faithful fan). The Gamecocks won unimpressively against a bad mid-major team, and I disappointed family members for absolutely no reason (the team lost approximately 70,000 games that year).

A couple of years later, I had graduated and was working as a reporter at a daily newspaper when the Gamecocks under Eddie Fogler came into a game against Rick Pitino’s Kentucky team. Improbably, USC won the ballgame in overtime – still the most exciting moment I’ve experienced as a Gamecock fan – with BJ McKie being more heroic than Stallone, Willis and Schwarzenegger combined.

I inevitably rushed the court like an amateur (that whole “act like you’ve been there before” thing? We hadn’t been there before, so whatever), and started banging on the table in front of one of the sportswriters who worked at the paper where I was an employee.

“Dude!” he said. “Get yourself together. You’re a journalist! Don’t let people see you act like this!”

Screw that, I thought. I’m not a journalist. I wasn’t then, and I’m not now.

I’m just a South Carolina fan.

In 2003, the last time we made the NCAA Tournament somewhere around the Bronze Age, I left work at lunch and went to the legendary Chief’s Wings and Firewater in Greenville to watch the game. This is how long ago this was: Chief’s left that spot on Orchard Park Road about 100 years ago. You could still smoke there when I went, and that hasn’t been legal in Greenville in what seems like decades.

The Gamecocks lost to Memphis that day – coached by John Calipari, who’s been at Kentucky now for, what, a century or two? I ended up skipping the rest of the workday and ordering a Jack Daniel’s or eight. We haven’t been back to the tourney since.

And stunningly, we aren’t going now.

After 24 wins, a win against the SEC champion on the road, beatings of two teams who improbably still made the tournament anyway (Vandy, Tulsa), we are not going to be in the field of 68.

Let it sink in: We didn’t get there, after ALL we’ve been through this year, and after a 15-0 start.

How did we get here?

I obviously don’t understand sports, because I thought we had a spot locked up about 10 different times this year. As early as late December, my old college roommate and I were talking on the phone about attending whatever games South Carolina played in the tournament.

This would be hilarious if it weren’t true. But it is.

Now, somehow, some way, we’re in the NIT as a 24-8 team that won 11 games in the SEC, and we’re watching a 19-win Vandy team that we defeated and who lost in the first round of the SEC Tournament make the NCAA’s.

Good times!

Anyone remember the last time we went 24-8? I do.

That was the 1996-97 Eddie Fogler team that won the SEC. They were a freaking No. 2 seed in the tournament.

Inexplicably, this group went 24-8 and didn’t even make it to the prom.

Explain that to me.

I appreciate what the tournament committee has done the last five years or so. They want the best teams to be there, and they want pretenders to fall by the wayside. I get it. Noble gesture.

But did the 37 teams that made the tournament from the Atlantic 10 really deserve to be there? Would they all have won 20-plus games if they played SEC teams (I’m just asking). If this sounds like sour grapes, fine. I still think it’s true.

If you think St. Bonaventure would have won the SEC this year, then God bless you. I do not.

I guess that sounds like sour grapes. Fair.

If you don’t lose to an awful Missouri team, and an awful Mississippi State team, and Tennessee on the road, and Georgia not once, not twice, but thrice, you almost certainly get there.

I know that.

Still, if you’re not devastated by this, I question whether you’re a Gamecock fan. This should not have happened.

Rationality is not the point right now. The NIT? Please. It means as much as winning the Independence Bowl in football. Fun, but meaningless.

We just wanted to make the tournament, man.

And we should have.

But we did not. This is what it means to be a South Carolina fan.

I’ll admit it: When it became obvious we weren’t going to make it, I hit the “Sad Songs” section of my iPod. Let there be no doubt that Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing At All” ended up scrolling across the screen.

We shouldn’t be here.

But we are.

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