Beating goes on for Palmetto State

Another Palmetto State team made a bee-line for the postseason exit. Make that Beilein.

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Michigan's DeShawn Sims and Clemson's Jerai Grant battle for a rebound in the first half of their first-round game.

Clemson's breakthrough back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances produced back-to-back first-round breakdowns. The Tigers got bounced 62-59 -- this time by Michigan -- which sounds a lot better than it really was.

Michigan, making its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1998, is coached by John Beilein. If that name sounds familiar to South Carolinians, it's because Beilein was the coach of Richmond when the Spiders stunned the Gamecocks in 1998.

Somehow that seemed fitting parallelism in a state that basketball left behind.

South Carolina continues to struggle with building any kind of hoops foundation. It is frankly the polar opposite of the other Carolina to its north, where basketball success is practically a birthright.

North Carolina has Tobacco Road. South Carolina only has the road back home.

Can you name the only Palmetto team to advance in the NCAA Tournament bracket in the past 12 years? If guessed Winthrop, you win.

In fact, the mighty Eagles are the most successful Palmetto State representative in the field of 65 for the past decade. Situated in Rock Hill, S.C., they're so close to the North Carolina border that something had to rub off. Winthrop has made eight trips to the NCAA Tournament since 1999, and its lone first-round victory over Notre Dame in 2007 is the high-water mark for the state since Clemson and the College of Charleston posted tournament wins in 1997.

With apologies to Frank McGuire, basketball just hasn't been South Carolina's sport.

College of Charleston flickered with mid-major promise under John Kresse back in the 1990s, beating Maryland in 1997 for its only win in four NCAA trips. South Carolina State is 0-5 in the Big Dance since 1989. Furman's lone highlight in six appearances came at the expense of McGuire's Gamecocks in 1974.

The flagship university has been the most curious postseason disappointment -- its recent consecutive NIT championships aside. The Gamecocks are 4-9 all-time in the NCAA Tournament, but half of those victories came in bygone regional consolation games on McGuire's able watch. They are winless in their past five attempts.

The two most successful South Carolina teams (since the glorious McGuire era before leaving the ACC) proved to be the two biggest postseason busts. The Eddie Fogler-led Gamecocks went belly up in consecutive first-round shockers to Coppin State and Richmond in 1997-98, and they haven't been the same since.

That regularly leaves Clemson as the state's best hope, but its ACC pedigree has only taken it so far. The Tigers were 8-8 overall in the NCAAs, including a run to the regional finals in its 1980 debut and two appearances in the regional semifinals in 1990 and '97. This team had high hopes of raising the bar back above .500.

This Clemson team held so much promise in January -- an all-too-familiar refrain for the Tigers. They started the year 16-0 and climbed into the top 10 of the polls.

But as hot as they were at the start, they were equally cold at the end. Clemson lost four of its last five coming into the NCAAs, including a first-round ouster by Georgia Tech in the ACC Tournament.

While these Tigers might not have been rated as high as last year's, they were supposedly more seasoned and facing a Michigan team riding its own NCAA drought. Last year's one-and-done against Villanova was supposedly a learning experience.

Apparently the Tigers couldn't shake the pressure. All the team meetings and extra practice time that coach Oliver Purnell spun into being a more positive outlook than last year's run to the ACC finals proved hollow. Michigan's systematic offense pulled away from a 27-26 lead seconds into the second half with a 16-3 run that sent the network scurring to other games.

This letdown seemed sealed the minute Terrence Oglesby got booted for an intentional elbow just three minutes into the second half. After going 1-11 from the floor in last year's loss to Villanova, Ogelsby talked about the excitement of "getting back on the horse to give it another shot." He made only one of eight shots before his flagrant elbow ended his sophomore year prematurely.

But the Tigers weren't done yet. A 14-0 run cut it to 58-57 with 48 seconds left. But Michigan answered with a 3-point play and held on to win 62-59 and give it one more postseason victory after an 11-year exile than the Tigers have over the same span.

And so the beating goes on for S.C. teams. Purnell's pregame assessment still stands.

"You know, we're not where we want to be yet," he said. "We think we've got good players coming in next year, and every year we get more and more experience in settings like this. I think it really helps us to be comfortable in the top half of the ACC, to be comfortable in the NCAA Tournament. And I think when you're comfortable, great things can happen."

That continues to be just a hope in a basketball state of despair.

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.