COLUMBIA — South Carolina wasn’t supposed to play meaningful basketball in March.

At least, that’s what the so-called experts who voted in the SEC preseason media poll told us when they picked South Carolina to finish last in the conference. Those “experts” include yours truly, who picked the Gamecocks to finish 10th out of 14 teams.

It’s a good thing they play the games, isn’t it?

Because there the Gamecocks were on Saturday afternoon, playing and beating No. 24 Florida in a matchup of ranked teams at Colonial Life Arena, behind a bellowing, boisterous, believing throng of Gamecocks fans who have embraced with open arms a team that has exceeded the preseason expectations of basically everyone outside of the basketball building in Columbia.

RELATED: North Carolina sports betting launches this month! Follow SDS for the latest updates and how to get a top sign-up offer!

Thanks to their latest win, a stirring comeback that saw the Gamecocks erase a 10-point deficit in the 2nd half, South Carolina has earned the opportunity to win a SEC regular-season championship with 2 wins this week, beginning Wednesday night at home against No. 4 Tennessee.

Everything that has made this South Carolina team special was on display in the comeback win over the Gators. Stout and versatile defense, thanks to switchable nightmares Zachary Davis and freshman Collin Murray-Boyles, who frustrated Florida, one of the nation’s best offenses, with their length and activity in a 1-3-1 zone the Gamecocks switched into down 10 points. Murray-Boyles, a 6-7, 230-pound piece of granite whose only SEC offer came from the Gamecocks, has added balance offensively as well, scoring in double figures in 7 of the Gamecocks previous 8 games.

South Carolina also has a deep, productive bench, including LSU transfer Josh Gray, who provided a +15 box/plus minus effort off the bench, and former 4-star recruit Jacobi Wright, whose 3-point shooting kept the Gamecocks in the game when they struggled with Florida’s length and physicality in the first half. Finally, the Gamecocks have a penchant for timely shot-making, with a number of players, including Wright, who make big shots.

On Saturday afternoon, it was a 25-point masterpiece — and tiebreaking 3 with 48 seconds to play — from guard Meechie Johnson Jr., the closest thing South Carolina has to a star.

After struggling much of January and February, the emergence of freshman Murray-Boyles and Johnson’s resurgence raises the March ceiling of a team that is now 24-5, 12-4 overall — 1 year removed from an 11-21 campaign that saw the Gamecocks win just 4 SEC games.

The memory of that hapless Gamecocks team, which featured a projected lottery pick in GG Jackson II (he was drafted in the later half of the second round after a series of teams passed after pre-draft workouts), lingered in the media, who picked the Gamecocks to repeat as SEC cellar-dwellers.

For Johnson, one of the lone centerpieces of both last season and this season’s team, the message from the media was clear.

“We heard it, we saw it, we considered it, we lingered on it,” Johnson told me after Saturday’s win over Florida. “But we play for one another. We find joy in competing, as Coach Paris tells us. Find joy in the little things. You win a game? Find joy. You get picked last? Find joy in defying that. And now we get to seek joy in winning a championship, which is something that outlasts ourselves.”

“Something that outlasts ourselves” is a made for tee shirt slogan that describes this South Carolina team’s commitment to playing for each other and being, against the odds, greater than the sum of their parts.

It isn’t just media doubt. Computers still don’t love this Gamecocks team. Their NET ranking is No. 47. KenPom slots the Gamecocks just inside the top 50 overall (44th), well behind the other 6 teams at the top of the SEC standings: Tennessee (5th), Auburn (6th), Alabama (8th), Kentucky (18th) and Florida (31st).

Good thing for the Gamecocks that games aren’t played or won on computers.

“We play for each other every day, which is something you hear teams talk about. I’ve been on teams where they say, ‘Oh, we are playing for one another.’ and they don’t share (the ball), they don’t fight through a screen, they don’t communicate a switch. They don’t practice for each other. And it shows. This team means what it says,” sophomore wing Zachary Davis told SDS. 

Building a team this invested in one another is even harder in the age of the transfer portal, where 1-year mercenaries are the rule, not the exception. But South Carolina coach Lamont Paris has put together a roster completely subscribed to his system and program. Four of South Carolina’s top 6 scorers are first-year players in the program, and 3 are transfers who played Division I basketball elsewhere last season. The other stars, Johnson Jr. and Murray-Boyles, are a veteran transfer who has bought in, and a freshman that no one else in the SEC thought highly enough to offer. Paris trusted himself and his staff’s evaluations anyway, and the results speak for themselves.

Paris never believed the negative media noise surrounding his program. Instead, he flipped the last place finish on its head, using it as a motivational tool.

“You pick my team last?” Paris said about the media’s choice. “Last is what you’re going to say? That usually means you don’t think we have good players or good coaches. Is that what you think? OK. Come on. Bring it. That mindset has transferred over to a lot of our players.”

Johnson said for a long time this season, if a Gamecocks player made a bad pass, or took a bad shot, or closed out poorly on defense, the coaches let them hear it in a slightly different way.

“That’s a last-place pass! That’s a last-place closeout! Just stuff like that which reminded us of what people thought we were,” Johnson told SDS. “Think about how tired you get of hearing ‘last place.'”

Paris, a Bo Ryan disciple and longtime Wisconsin assistant who keeps the bench chairs from both his Final Fours at Wisconsin in his office in Columbia, never thought he’d built a last-place roster. He liked the energy and feel of his team, even if others didn’t. When the team went to the Bahamas in August, he saw something observers outside the basketball building didn’t notice.

“I’ll be honest, I figured out what this team was about, forget winning or losing — I knew the makeup of our team way, way early. We went on that trip to the Bahamas and it was telling in all the right ways. That’s why when people told me they were going to pick us last, I joked around about it and I was a little snarky. I knew who we had, I knew our guys and what they were about. I didn’t want to put a number of wins or losses on it. I’m not going to tell you it would be 24-5 in March. But I knew we had winning guys.”

Ryan, who led Wisconsin to 4 Big 10 titles and 2 Final Fours, amassing over 350 wins in the process, used to say that a coach “figures out who his team is in a few key moments every season.” On Saturday, Paris agreed,

“There’s probably been a few of them,” Paris said. “(Saturday) was one of them, switching to zone and winning. Our road wins, including at Tennessee, where we didn’t blow them out, we made it happen down the stretch. Against really good teams, you have to show the toughness to close them out. Kentucky at home was probably the first time, in terms of saying ‘OK, there is some sort of reputation, and there is a little number next to the opponent’s name that is really small. How are we going to react to that? Are we going to be shell-shocked or in awe?’ No. We won that game by 17 or whatever it was. There were a lot of little moments.”

Win on Wednesday night against Tennessee, and all those little moments will lead to a bigger moment — a chance to win the SEC regular-season title on Saturday at Mississippi State before taking aim at the SEC Tournament title. Even if the Gamecocks fail, they’ll still hear their name called, with a strong seed, on Selection Sunday.

Paris and his coaching staff and players aren’t surprised, even if that is surprising.

“I knew what we had. I’m grateful for the opportunity to coach this team. We have had a special year. And we’ll seek joy in what’s still in front of us, which has worked so far,” Paris said.

Seeking joy, the Gamecocks have provided their fan base, and the college basketball world at large, plenty of joy. Now that it’s March, you can bet there’s more to come.