Lamont Paris reveals next step for South Carolina

Year one for Lamont Paris at South Carolina was a rough one as the Gamecocks finished 11-21 overall and 4-14 in SEC play. The season ended Wednesday against Ole Miss, and Paris now embarks on his first full offseason with the program.

There’s still a lot to figure out, especially replacing departing players. Leading scorer GG Jackson could take his talents to the NBA and Hayden Brown is out of eligibility after ranking third on the team in scoring and leading the team in steals. That’s why Paris said he’s not worrying too much about the current roster.

He’s looking toward the future.

“I think every team in America is always on a mission to make some roster management,” Paris said. “This day and age, that will be a big part of things. We’ll get back and pretty quickly here, we’ll be talking about roster management situations. Obviously, Hayden will be gone. But I think plugging and improving your overall talent level, whether that’s physically, whether that’s from a skill standpoint, addressing needs that you have. I hate to talk about student-athletes as commodities, but that’s what it ends up sounding like.

“Getting that all put together, that’s the next step. That’s what we will be. We’ve been involved in some of that already, amazingly enough. A lot of our time, it’s not spent with our current student-athletes. Almost all of our time will be involved in that. That’s the biggest priority as we move forward from today.”

Lamont Paris reveals recruiting pitch after first year at South Carolina

As he gets ready for his second year as the head coach, Paris isn’t changing his recruiting pitch heading into the offseason.

“When you talk about the foundation that’s laid, these are some of the high points that can certainly occur when you have a group of guys that are relatively inexperienced,” Paris said. “Our numbers were not what we wanted them to be.

“I think as you’re talking to recruits, that’s part of it. ‘Vision’ is always a word that goes out there, too. You want kids that want to be a part of something special. Doing it in a different way, that’s why I can’t thank Hayden Brown enough, he was the first guy that said yes to come here. He wanted to be on the ground floor, and he did. It took longer for us to get to this point. I’d like to play 30 more games right now. That’s what I’d really like to do. I’m sure he would, too.”