Lamont Paris exposes South Carolina players for 'unacceptable' aspect of Vanderbilt loss

South Carolina’s one-possession loss in Nashville on Tuesday was that much more brutal, considering how little it took care of the basketball.

Head coach Lamont Paris was critical of the Gamecocks’ turnover problem against Vanderbilt following the 66-63 loss. It’s hard enough to win when you turn it over 25 times, but is that much harder when you don’t do everything else well, which is almost a credit to them, considering the final margin was only by three against the Commodores.

“Frustrating loss,” Paris said. “We turned the ball over a third of the time that we had it. That’s, that’s unacceptable,” Paris said. “It’s just going to be hard to win a game if you do that. You know, and then you do that in conjunction with 11 second-chance points and, you know, you need all those things to happen if you’re going to turn the ball over a lot.”

South Carolina is averaging 12.2 turnovers per game on this season. However, it more than doubled that number against Vandy for its most turnovers in a game during Paris’ tenure by far and most in a game since also having 25 against North Carolina back in 2011.

The Gamecocks calculated to turn it over on over a third of their possessions against Vandy, with all of their starters posting at least three with Collin Murray-Boyles and Zachary Davis having five apiece. That, while improving on that bad stat as the game went on, still obviously cost the Gamecocks in Music City.

“We did cut it down from 16 first-half turnovers to nine only in the second half so,” said Paris. “But, yeah, I mean, you can’t turn the ball over like that…And 15 of them were just steals.”

With that, Paris says he and his staff are now going to have to drill some of that out of their team

“I think we just have to go back to the drawing board,” Paris said. “I think we have to go back to the drawing board on, once you beat your man? Practicing someone from behind smacking down at the ball really hard and then still keeping the ball to go up to the rim. Because I’d say the vast majority of them ended up that way. So, that’ll be on us as coaches to go back and really practice, practice being really strong with the ball.”

You’re not going to win many games, if any and especially on the road, giving the ball away that much. That gave them a few days to get that total down before they’ll take their winless start to league play on the road again this weekend in a game both teams have to have in Norman.