Lamont Paris compares building programs at South Carolina, Chattanooga

South Carolina was exceedingly average, if not below average, during coach Lamont Paris‘ first season in charge. It’s been anything but in his second, sitting at 19-3 overall and 7-2 in Southeastern Conference play.

The Gamecocks are playing for tournament seeding at this point.

But this is essentially the blueprint Paris followed at his last stop, Chattanooga. There, he built the Mocs into an NCAA Tournament team that also won the Southern Conference.

Though the two programs are very, very different, Paris explained how things have come together so nicely at South Carolina, just like at Chattanooga.

“Lot of similarities, to be honest with you,” Paris said on the College Hoops Today podcast. “I’m a process-driven guy and it starts with the people and the culture that fits me, and so that was the biggest part of the whole thing. So I’d say a lot of similarities this way.”

That’s not to say everything has been the same between the two programs.

The South Carolina head coach pointed to one key difference in how he’s had to adjust now that he’s with the Gamecocks.

“The one difference is that when you get to this level, to project that a kid can play at this level when maybe a lot of people don’t think he can play at this level, that’s a little bit more difficult to do in the SEC than it is in the Southern Conference, to be honest with you,” Lamont Paris said.

In other words, it’s harder to take chances on player evaluations. The margins for error are too thin and it’s simply too costly if you get it wrong. Despite that South Carolina has found a ton of success under Paris, just continuing to win games.

The team has now won five straight, its third winning streak this season of at least five games.

Paris pointed back to an early season contest against Virginia Tech that his squad won 79-77 as the real jumping-off point for this year’s squad.

“I thought that was great. The first thing that we did, we played in the Bahamas,” Lamont Paris said. “We played two games down there. Every four years you can go on a foreign tour. But then to come right out of the gates and play a team and a program like Virginia Tech, they’re well-coached, they’re very regimented in what they do, they know how to win, they expect to win and they have some veterans. I thought that was a great test right out of the gates.

“As you can see, they’ll still played well for the most part this season. So I thought that was a real confidence-builder not just for us as coaches, but for the players to know that this was a team that just a couple years ago won the ACC Tournament. I thought that was huge for our confidence.”

Confidence certainly seems to be plentiful these days in Columbia, where Paris has the team firing on all cylinders.

South Carolina’s next matchup will be against Ole Miss on Tuesday, a game that tips off at 6:30 p.m. ET on the SEC Network.