Final Four 2017: After a long ride, South Carolina gets Martin, Clark to big stage

Stories from the South Carolina bus as Gamecocks make their coaches winners

By Dennis Dodd

Mar 31, 2017 at 8:53 pm ET • 6 min read

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Another South Carolina Final Four day has begun, not with another Frank Martin feel-good story, but with a 65-year old lifer in the third row on the left of the team bus.

Assistant coach Perry Clark has his heart-tugging story to tell too. On Friday morning from a quiet bus parked at the back of the Hyatt Regency, the tale begins 31 years ago when, as a Bobby Cremins assistant at Georgia Tech, Clark was inconsolable.

The second-seeded Yellow Jackets had just lost to No. 11 seed LSU in the Sweet 16 in Atlanta, in the Omni. Basically, a home game. A Final Four opportunity of a lifetime blown.

That Georgia Tech team featured four players who would play at least a decade in the NBA -- Mark Price, John Salley, Tom Hammonds and Duane Ferrell.

“I’m crushed. I go home. I do not leave the house,” Perry said Friday morning. “Finally, on Sunday my youngest girl and I have a tradition. I always take her to the park. I tried to explain to her.”

Daddy isn’t going walking this morning.

“Daddy,” five-year old Pamela Clark countered, “it’s just a game.”

That face, those eyes. It helped Clark get out of the funk, get to the park and eventually get to the Final Four.

“Didn’t you ever hear this story?” Clark said.

Well, no. Just like a thousand others Martin and the Gamecocks have dropped on the nation this week. A program left for nothing five years ago is close to winning a tournament that has meant everything over the past month.

This is one of those stories you only get on the team bus headed to Friday’s open practice. Clark is looking for someone to talk to. Martin is looking at his coffee and bagel. The players are filing in, looking for a comfortable seat.

So sit back yourselves.

Part of the reason Clark -- who spent 22 years as a head coach -- is even here is because of a random act of kindness. Martin was an assistant at Northeastern 15 or so years ago recruiting in South Florida. Clark -- then at Miami -- had recommended Martin to then-Huskies coach Ron Everhart.

On that day, Clark handed Martin’s two-year old son Brandon a $20 bill.

“Make sure your dad buys you something good for you,” Clark told him.

“I used the $20 to buy us lunch,” Martin said Friday.

You see, in those days Northeastern allowed $75 a day per diem to rent a car and pay for a hotel room. Ends sometimes didn’t meet.

Perry Clark has finally made it to the Final Four, as a South Carolina assistant. USATSI

On a recruiting trip to West Texas, Martin slept in the apartment of then-Odessa Community College assistant Matt Figger and spent the rest in the car.

“You raise your family in Midland,” Figger said of the twin city 20 miles away, “and raise hell in Odessa.”

Martin owes Clark more than a 20. That March in 1986, Cremins convinced Clark to snap out of his depression and go to the Final Four in Dallas. Every college coach goes. It’s a way to blow off steam, see old friends, forget about agonizing tournament losses.

“I put my bags down. I rent a car. I drive to Reunion Arena,” Clark recalled, “and sit in the car and cry like a baby. It hit me to see that and not be there and see all that hard work and not know if it would ever come again.

“I go back to the hotel, call the airline and flew out five o’clock the next morning. Never watched a game. I couldn’t handle it.”

This Final Four story picks up again after Clark won 304 games in those 22 years, finally being fired by Texas-Corpus Christi in 2011.

Martin hired his old friend a year later when he got to South Carolina.

“He’s out of the business, on TV,” Martin said, the bus purring underneath his front-row seat. “I brought him to speak at a coaching clinic. We sit down and talk.”

Clark wasn’t done coaching, not in his heart or mind. He was hoping then just for a recommendation to Anthony Grant at Alabama.

The meeting with Martin became more. It became a baring of the soul, emotional baggage left over from 1986. Oh, did we mention the year before in 1985 Georgia Tech had lost in the regional final to Georgetown?

“My whole career all I’ve wanted to do is walk out on the court at the Final Four and pass balls to my players at practice and know my team was playing,” Clark said.

The pecking order is clear on the 25-minute ride to University of Phoenix Stadium. Martin in the front row, Figger, now Martin’s top assistant, in the second row. Then Clark.

As cleansing as it is, the Final Four can also shine a brighter light. Dana Altman has been called into question for his handling of former Oregon players accused of sexual assault.

Until further notice, it has to be assumed two North Carolina championship banners (2005, ‘09) remain in play for the NCAA to take down amid the lengthy and ugly academic fraud investigation.

Martin has his own skeletons. His, um, intensity being one of them.

“The demeanor on the court came up,” said Eric Hyman, the former South Carolina athletic director who hired Martin. “He’s very demonstrative. He’s very passionate but the thing is, his kids love him. So you had to look past that.”

“Anyone who wants to ask me about it and go over my background,” Martin said. “I’ve never ducked a question. It’s who I am.”

Have you heard the one about Martin walking out on his team, disgusted, during a practice this season?”

“We were having an awful practice, terrible,” guard Justin McKie said. “We couldn’t believe it. If anything, we thought he’d put us on the line and make us run.”

Figger finished the practice.

The guys in the first three rows of the bus, then, have been through a lot together. Figger was there when Martin took Kansas State to the Elite Eight in 2010. They were together when Michael Beasley became the most famous (and only) one-and-done Kansas State player in history.

They profited from a stash of talent left to them by Bob Huggins, who pulled his own one-and-done -- leaving K-State after one season to go to West Virginia.

They love telling the story of that first dreadful year in 2012-13 at South Carolina. There is the story about the cell phone going off in a mostly empty Colonial Life Arena during Martin’s first game four years ago.

Figger: “You can hear it ringing. It’s deathly silent in the gym.”

Martin: “The guy’s phone ringing and he answers it, ‘Hey, yeah. This game’s awful.’ “

Figger: “We’re playing Wisconsin-Milwaukee in front of 3,000 people in an 18,000-seat arena. It was as quiet as it could possibly be.”

Martin: “True story”

Figger: “There used to be one guy our first season that would just look and stare at us the entire time.”

Martin: “I remember that.”

Figger: “Trying to figure out who we are, I guess.”

There are smiles. The bus is getting close to the stadium. Clark can’t get 1986 out of his mind. He contends former Louisville star Pervis Ellison almost came to Georgia Tech.

It should sting, then, that Louisville won the whole thing that year and Ellison was the Final Four’s most outstanding player.

“To me, that changed the game of college basketball,” Clark said.

It’s possible the players and coaches getting off the South Carolina bus Friday morning were about to do the same thing. We won’t know for sure until the weekend is over.