But Kotsar’s journey to this year at South Carolina didn’t start this year or last or even two years ago. It was five years ago when assistant Perry Clark hopped on a plane to Wichita, Kansas to put the first set of Gamecock eyes on Kotsar.
At the time, the Gamecocks were in the middle of a 25-win season and Clark saw something in Kotsar South Carolina didn’t have currently: a better version of Mindaugas Kacinas, who finished his senior season averaging 9.9 points and 5.1 rebounds per game.
“I told Frank, Maik right then, I thought, was better than Mindaugas,” Clark said. “I think certainly, under Frank’s direction, he’d have a better career than Mindaugas. That was the evaluation I brought back to Frank. I thought his skill set, his size and all that made it so he’d be a better player than Mindaugas.”