This was one of the worst years to be a men’s bb fan at Carolina. Other than the 2 unexpected wins over UK and sCUm this year has been pathetic. There’s a ton of talent in this country and in the state and the southeast. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recruit. You gotta recruit scorers at all positions. At least have 2 shooters who can score out on the court at all times. This team was awful. Out of all the team members I’d say 4 can shoot. GG is overrated and needs more development, but he won’t stay. Paris needs some serious pointers on how to win in the sec. This is not the SoCon. Look at how Mizzou took an unknown coach from Cleveland St and look at times like world beaters. They’ll make the tourney too. For me making the tourney 1-2 times in 20 years won’t cut iit anymore. Paris has next year to make the tourney or he gets fired. He has roughly 6 months to hit the portal and recruit. I’m sick of watching these tourneys without the Gamecocks!
Sincere post about Carolina men’s BB
- Thread starter SouthFLCock
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Our recruiting has been sad. Paris must make some waves in recruiting, fast and furious. He has no time to waste if he wants to stick around. And those recruits must hit the ground running!
Overall I get this statement. But Paris did land the program’s highest ranked recruit ever…in his first season. So hard to criticize him on that point right now.
Wrong. He's not getting fired if there is significant improvement next year. Not sure he'll get fire even if there's moderate improvement.
Sounds as if you have joined the half-cocked club.
No coach should be fired after his second year for not making the NCAAT.
We need program building recruits. GG was a good splash, one and done but did very little to help the program start to grow. A minimum of a couple of mature transfers are needed. Paris also needs to take a page from Shane and lock up local recruits.
Not sure where he has established ties outside of SC but he needs to work them hard.
Lamont Paris will not get us to a perennial top third of the SEC, which is where we need to aspire to be.
I have chosen to neither watch nor discuss Gamecock men’s basketball.
You are setting yourself up for disappointment. Going back to Frank McGuire, EVERY Head Basketball Coach here has been given at least 4 seasons, except Newton who committed recruiting violations. Head Coaches (Muschamp and Holbrook) hired by Tanner were each given 5 seasons (Muschamp fired in the middle of his 5th season). I was hoping for Sean Miller, when his name came up for the job. I was very disappointed when that did not happen. So, I have a choice: I can complain, which is my right to do. Or, I can look at the bright side and realize that Martin (who was fired) left Paris a huge mess that even Phil Jackson would have a hard time dealing with. I can realize that even though they sucked this past season, they were not the worst in the SEC. I can realize that Paris had a better first season here than Dawn Staley did. I can also take hope that Paris' UT-C teams improved each season. I choose the later. But that's me.
post… you can thank Frank for this year. I thank Lamont for showing progress as the year went on with a pieced together roster.
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I chose to watch the Premiere League. Because there is NO WAY this team makes the NCAA in the next 2 years.
I have prepared myself for 0 conference wins next year, then I cans see a progress after that.
If recruiting goes well I could see us having a chance at a tournament in 26.
I have prepared myself for 0 conference wins next year, then I cans see a progress after that.
If recruiting goes well I could see us having a chance at a tournament in 26.
The validity of this post was made when you said GG is overrated. GG is absolutely not overrated. He is young, and has much maturing to do. Overrated would be saying that he is not as good as everyone says he is. He is as good as everyone says he is. When you can go in the first round of the NBA draft as an 18 year old, how on earth could that be considered overrated?
Paris has next year to win or he gets fired? LOL. No, he won't. Very good chance we don't make the tourney, but we will improve. That buys him another year. If he improves again, he gets another year.
It is simple. We should fire Paris and hire one of you experts that have never lost game. Of course that means you never coached one either.
Well we had a tournament team coming back for 22-23 that the admin crapped on. And for those who thought it was past time to fire Frank, what was one more year? If he failed to make the tournament with a tournament quality roster, then every fan would’ve supported moving on.
No one has a good answer to that question. So what did the admin do? They proceeded to hire probably the least qualified coach of all available coaches. Oh and then we had a terrible team and season. Which was entirely self-inflicted.
Here's the answer to the question nobody will answer. He had tournament teams several other years and they crapped the bed. Last year and the prior year he knew it was tourney or bust. He was given more than enough time to make the tourney for a 2nd time. The first year he received a lifeline from some people in high places. "Next year" can't go on forever. Frank did too little coaching and too much point proving.
Every year was tournament quality roster until it wasn't. Had good big men and guards coming back after the final 4 team, until they didn't. We had two big guys you knew had potential, until Frank's incessant screaming at them made them afraid to move. They left, others were dismissed, and on to the next year. Rinse and repeat. I thought if everyone stayed we might have a chance to be good also this year..............but I also was okay with Frank being let go. His time had passed for us. Stevenson, Cousinard, Bryant, Leveque, etc may have made a nice roster, but Frank would play his son over them so what does it matter. I notice no one except Stevenson lit it up anywhere they went this year. Frank had killed his confidence and he was cocky so you have to work hard to kill his confidence.
Adios Frank
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Agree with everything you said. Cousy was having a very nice year this year as was Devin Carter last I looked (it's been about a month).
Pulling for Paris, but this team needs to take the off-season and learn how to play basketball. Get back to the basics. I watched as players stood in one spot and clap for the ball when their teammates were trapped. Move and make yourself a target. Learn how to play together. It's like in a pickup game and these 5 guys come in together. They look like they can't play, but when they get on the court they just know where each other is going to be. We don't need Curry and Durant pretenders. We have the talent to have winning seasons (maybe not championships) if we play the game right. Thought Paris was perfect for our situation ... could win with less talent. Then I heard during the tournament game that he won at UTC with transfers from larger schools. I think he'll get it together. Also, I might be wrong, but I think GG is giving serious thought about 1 more year. It might not be the best decision draft-wise, but I'm sure he would love to lead a turnaround.
No guarantee these guys even stick around with Frank. It was a constant revolving door for players when he was here. I think the time had come to move on from him. I have no reason to expect this year would’ve been any different than the previous seasons he coached. Just think Paris has no shot at our job if not for the miracle shot to beat Furman. Think about that…if not for the one shot, we probably have never heard of Lamont Paris. We should’ve hired Bob Richey…the guy that put 4 solid seasons together. Not 4 days.
That being said, Paris didn’t do awful (based on expectations) this year and he didn’t do great. I like that he was willing to bench his star player and win a game. He won games on the road so that’s nice. It’ll be easier to learn to win at home. He beat Clemson. And he probably did win more SEC games than we thought. I wouldn’t say he did anything awesome. But he didnt do anything absolutely terrible either, outside of Tennessee. He’s definitely getting more than one more year. Anyone that thinks otherwise simply doesn’t know ****.
Need to hit the portal hard next week starting with Skyy Clark and Nick Timberlake among others!
Yes. Richey was higher on my list than Paris, too. My guess is that what sold Tanner on Paris is that he coached under Bo Ryan, one of the elite basket ball coaches in the nation prior to retirement. Also agree with you regarding Martin.
Your description of Paris' performance this season is spot on as well. I'm not sure what critics of Paris expected in his first season here, especially in light of the fact that he had to practically bring in enough players from the "leftovers" just to be able to scrimmage. Surely those critics did not expect a post-season tournament this season. But, then again, you never know about some people.
I guess I just never bought the hype about all the other rosters being tournament quality. I think Frank had 3 maybe 4 quality rosters.
If they weren't tournament rosters, that's also on Frank. He didn't capitalize on the Final Four run.
It was his first year as coach here. Good Lord.
The sad thing is gonna be having to try to be excited if Paris really overachieves next year and gets us into the NIT. There's nothing more useless than the NIT, but some fans still get enamored with it. "Extra practices!!!"
I don't know of any fans from the power 5 that get enamored by the NIT. I would watch if we played but wouldn't get excited.
I understand it can be a good stepping stone for a team on the rise, but, honestly, the Dave Odom era burned me out on the NIT. Probably unfair to hold that against Paris. Just as a fan, it's hard to forget the futility.
Back on old CockyTalk, there were some rather heated arguments around this time of year with fans arguing passionately in favor of the NIT.
I can see cutting the cord with Paris after next season if it goes about the same as this year. I think you can get by with a year as dismal as this one was in your first year, but not after that. There HAS to be some signs of progress next year. The good news for Paris is that there is plenty of room for improvement.
We need to be .500 overall, or close to it next year. Probably unrealistic to expect .500 in conference play after going 4-14 this year. We need to add 3 or 4 wins though. If we can go .500 overall and get 7 or more conference wins, that's good progress over this year. If next year approximates this year, though, then you have to think long and hard about it.
It nevertheless becomes part of the overall body of work against which he will eventually evaluated.
I agree with you there. Part of that body of work will be that 2 of the 13 scholarship players from Martin's last team graduated and 7 decided to leave with Frank when he got the boot, I believe a couple of them transferred to UMASS. Thus Paris had to replace nearly 70% of the roster right from the start. And you know that the cream of the crop are not available to replace them at such a late date. GG fell into our lap after things did not work out where he first committed (Duke or UNC, I forget which).
Well, the good news is that the bar was set about as low it can be set this season. It would be almost impossible to not show marked improvement next year.
Most of us realized that Paris would have a huge building job, which is why I'm willing to give him time. If Tanner's history (with Holbrook and Muschamp) with his hires is any indication, I believe he will do just that. Honestly, since Paris had to replace nearly 70% of his roster before even blowing his whistle, I am surprised we won as many as 4 SEC conference games.
100%. We paid 20 million to go from NCAA tourny level to one of the worst teams in the country. Brilliant!
I'm ok with that. The experts on here wanted Gregg Marshall, Scott Drew, Bobby Knight, Chris Beard. All were avaialable. Instead our administration gave us Dave Odom, Darrin Horn, Frank Martin and Lamont Paris. The "experts" do seem to be better at this than our ADs and consulting firms we hire.
I wanted Nick Saban as our football coach. There was zero chance 3 out of the 4 would come here. The one that would have likely come was run out of basketball.