The South Carolina Gamecocks’ improbable run to this weekend’s Final Four did not begin with a first-round win over Marquette in Greenville on March 17.

It actually began a year ago on Selection Sunday.

Duane Notice and his teammates believed that a school-record 25-win season was about to propel the Gamecocks to their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2004. The team was ready to celebrate and watch the CBS broadcast with fans to make it official.

“They had the T-shirts ready and stuff like that,” Notice recalled. “We knew something was up when they changed the location – we were supposed to go to a watch party, but instead of a watch party, we watched it in the locker room by ourselves. And that’s when we kinda knew something was off.”

Something was off. South Carolina’s name wasn’t called. There would be yet another year without a tournament appearance in Columbia.

“It kinda crushed us because we felt like we did everything in our power, but at the same time, we controlled our own fate because we lost a few games,” Notice said. “Some games we dropped, we probably shouldn’t have dropped. We gave them away and didn’t take them seriously enough and we ended up losing our opportunity to go to the tournament. That hurt us, but at the same time motivated us to work harder in the summer.”

Flash forward just over a year and that motivation paid off.

The Toronto-born Notice, now a senior, and his teammates find themselves just two wins away from an unlikely national title. But for Notice, even just the chance to compete in the Tournament helped keep the former St. Michael’s College School guard in South Carolina for his senior year.

“There were no thoughts of leaving,” Notice said.  “It’s a great institution, a great school. I like my education and I want to complete that. As much as I love playing basketball, it was always a goal to graduate from here. But at the same time, it was also just the fact that we didn’t make the tournament. I have a lot of friends like [former Gonzaga guard and Holland’s Landing, Ont., native] Kevin Pangos and other guys who played in the tournament who told me it was the greatest experience of their life. I knew I had to come back and try to make that run again.”

One of three seniors on this year’s team, Notice’s role has expanded both on the court and with his mates. The SEC Sixth Man of the Year a season ago, Notice now starts and, as one of the veterans in the squad, is looked to for guidance from some of his younger teammates.

“I think this year kinda forced me to be more of a leader, be more vocal,” Notice explained. “Usually, I lead by example, by action, but this year, I had to take it upon myself – and my coach put the power in me – to lead vocally. That’s what I had to do and step out of my comfort zone.”

On the floor, Notice is a big reason why the Gamecocks possess the fourth-best team defensive efficiency rating in the country.

“He’s probably the best on-ball defender in the country,” teammate PJ Dozier said of Notice. “He really makes our defence.”

Prioritizing the defensive side of the game has paid off for Notice, something he credits to transitioning into the starting lineup.

“I think my role changed in being a starter and making sure I’m more defensively locked in because Sindarius [Thornwell] and PJ can score,” Notice said. “When we’re on the court, we play an inside-out game, so my role wasn’t necessarily to average a whole lot of points and score as much as I did last year, coming off the bench and playing with the second unit.”

Key to this growth has been Notice’s evolving relationship with his backcourt mate and the Gamecocks’ leading scorer Thornwell.

“Our relationship has grown, it’s gotten better,” Notice said.  “We’ve always been brothers, but going through adversity together, it’s allowed us to make ourselves vulnerable towards each other and trust each other even more when it comes to difficult times and moments like this when we’re seeing the success of our hard work grow.”

That development has been under the tutelage of Frank Martin. After six years at Kansas State, the 51-year-old native of Miami took over a moribund Gamecocks program in 2012 after South Carolina won only 10 games in the previous season. Martin’s gruff demeanour has made him a social media sensation during March Madness.

But the on-camera intensity belies a man with a big sense of humour and a focus on family, says Notice.

“He’s someone who cares about all of us, more so off the court than on the court,” Notice explained. “It’s funny because every time we have family come to games, he remembers exactly what our parents’ names are, what our siblings’ names are, uncles, aunts, cousins. That goes to show you how family-oriented he is.”

Notice understands why people seem to get Martin wrong.

“On TV, he looks like a rough, mean guy, but that’s just his passion,” Notice said. “He’s the kind of guy who gets fired up as a coach and he wants it so bad for us. He’s a guy who wants to do the right thing as much as possible and be consistent. He’s helped us become better men and much better basketball players.”

What makes the Gamecocks’ run all the more surprising is that this team appeared to be destined for one-and-done fodder in the first round. Falling to Alabama in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament, South Carolina headed to their opening-round matchup with the Golden Eagles with just two wins in their last seven games.

But it was like a switch flipped for the team.

“Once the tournament started, we treated it like a brand new season,” Notice said. We got ourselves together, mentally and physically, and we were able to understand that – especially as seniors – one more loss and our season was done, our careers were done at the University of South Carolina. We didn’t want that happen yet. We weren’t ready. So it was a combination of that and the fact that we were picked to lose almost every game that we played in. It kinda added motivation, just another new aspect.”

Another massive source of motivation is the school community rooting them on back in Columbia.

South Carolina isn’t what you would call a basketball school. The program hadn’t won a tournament game prior to this month since 1973. Though the Gamecocks won back-to-back College World Series in 2010 and 2011, led by current Major League Baseball players Jackie Bradley, Jr., Sam Dyson and Whit Merrifield, the school is known primarily for its football program (Hey, it’s the SEC, after all). South Carolina counts Sterling Sharpe, Alshon Jeffrey and Melvin Ingram among its alumni.

But the excitement back home is palpable.

To wit, Chris Trainor, writer for the local alt weekly Free Times calls this Gamecocks’ run the biggest moment in the school’s sports history.

“I don’t think there’s any question this weekend’s men’s Final Four represents the biggest moment in the history of South Carolina athletics,” Trainor wrote. “The Final Four is one of the grandest stages in all of sports, and the Gamecocks’ participation in it is all the more magnified by the fact that no quasi-rational person would have ever predicted they would get there.”

For Notice and his teammates, though, there’s no time to get caught up in the enormity of the moment.

“I know for the other guys, we feel real good,” Notice said. “We’ll celebrate, but at the same time, with all of the attention that we’re getting, we understand with the core group of guys that we have, we still have two more games to play. We’re not thinking about the finals. We’re not thinking about what we’ve accomplished so far, the past or the future. We’re thinking about the moment.”

Soaking it all in as it happens is how the team will move forward into the Final Four.

“I think it’s important for us to stay in it and embrace it, just live in the moment and that’s what we’ve been doing,” Notice continued. “A bunch of stats and a whole lot of cool facts have been thrown at us, but we don’t go looking for that stuff. The media tells us about it and it’s very gratifying and it feels good to come from this school and shake things up because we’re known as a football school. To help rebuild the program has just been tremendous. It’s been something I can live by and remember as I get older.

Notice hasn’t forgotten where he came from and the impact the local NBA team played on his development.

“Whenever anybody asks me why I play basketball, I say it’s because of Vince Carter,” Notice said. “It’s because of the Raptors and the fact that Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady and those guys made basketball common in our country.”

Notice, like the other 20 Canadians in March Madness, doesn’t remember a time when professional basketball in Canada didn’t exist.

“They were established in ’95 and I was born in ’94, so I was born into basketball, you could say,” Notice said. “I know it sounds kind of cliché, but at the same time, it was a motivating factor for all of us Canadians, especially growing up and not having ESPN. All you could watch was the Raptors and watch all of the different talent – Michael Jordan and everybody – come through and play in Toronto. I’ve been to a lot of Raptors games and it’s all been motivating, as I’m sure it was for a lot of us Canadians.”

The Canadian contingent in this year’s Final Four is strong. Along with Notice, Dillon Brooks (Mississauga, Ont.) and Dylan Ennis (Toronto) of Oregon and Gonzaga’s Dustin Triano (Vancouver) all hail from north of the 49th. And Notice couldn’t be more thrilled.

“It’s a cool experience to play in this tournament and know that there are other Canadians in it,” Notice said. “I think Canada, when it comes to basketball, is a large, but close-knit group. We all stay in contact with each other and as basketball competitors, it feels good to play against each other and have those bragging rights in the tournament. When we see each other, we all root for each other, so it’s real cool.”

Triano will be the first fellow Canuck that Notice sees up close when the Gamecocks take on his Bulldogs on Saturday, but Notice’s focus will likely be on Gonzaga’s leading scorer, Nigel Williams-Goss. Williams-Goss is fresh off a 23-point performance against Xavier in the Elite Eight and has just been nominated for the John. A Wooden Award, given to the NCAA’s player of the year.

Notice says he’s ready for the task.

“It’s going to be a great opportunity for me to showcase to the world how [good] my defence is and that I’m up for the challenge,” Notice said. “I’ve just got to do my best to make sure that I can stop him from running their offence because, if I’m not mistaken, he’s a pretty good floor general. My agenda is going to be to disrupt him, get into the offence and preventing him from feeling comfortable.”

While no one on Martin’s team will consider looking past Gonzaga for a second, a date in the championship against archrivals UNC is a tantalizing prospect for many in the Carolinas. While the Gamecocks reaching the Final Four is huge news in Columbia, it’s old hat in Chapel Hill. With five NCAA titles to their name, this is the Tar Heels’ 20th Final Four appearance.

Notice admits that a potential showdown with Roy Williams’ squad is something that has come up in conversation, but that it might be more appealing to others than it is to him.

“Obviously, when it comes to playing UNC – not to get ahead of ourselves because we still have a game to play – I’m sure it would be a great thing for the state,” Notice said. “North Carolina versus South Carolina, bragging rights and it’d be something historical. Either which way, we’re still going to have added motivation, not from only just the fact that we can be the last team left standing in college basketball, because if it’s UNC, it’s a born rivalry or whatever you wanna call it, or it’s Oregon, for me, I can tell Dylan Ennis for the rest of my life that I got him.”

Before any of that can happen, though, there is the matter of Saturday - the biggest game of Notice’s life, the biggest game in the history of South Carolina basketball.

Getting to where the Gamecocks are right now is a massive accomplishment, but for Notice and his teammates, it’s still not enough. It’s not the end goal.

“One thing that we’ve all preached as seniors to the rest of the guys is that when Sindarius, Justin [McKie] and I initially came here, we didn’t have the video production, we didn’t have all of the attention on social media that we’re getting now,” Notice said. “We’ve lost a lot of games. We’re trying to preach to them to not take this for granted.”

Enjoy this, but want more. Be satisfied, but don’t be self-satisfied.

“For us, coming from the bottom and that kind of hardship, has allowed us to cherish this moment and to not be complacent because we’re hungry for more,” Noticed continued. “We’ve had a taste of success by continuing to win games, but we’re hungry for more. It’s like we’re addicted to it.”

Notice and the Gamecocks will have a chance to feed that addiction on Saturday evening in Phoenix.