Lamont Paris provides injury update on Myles Stute after Missouri game

South Carolina has been without one of its top contributors for the past three games, after Vanderbilt transfer Myles Stute suffered a shoulder injury in a game against Georgia on Jan. 16.

Stute did not play in the team’s win over Missouri on Saturday, though he took part in warmups with the team.

Head coach Lamont Paris provided a pretty thorough update on Stute following the game.

“I think he’s close. I mean pretty close. We’ll see,” Paris said. “He got some live-ish reps at practice yesterday. I mean pretty live in a controlled environment. So before he lets it rip rip I want to make sure that he’s strong enough and has the range of motion — not me, trust me, it ain’t me that’s doing that — but they’ll tell me that his range of motion and strength is at such a level that risk of injury is minimal, and then we’ll do it.”

Myles Stute has been good this season when healthy, soaking up 26.2 minutes per contest on the wing. He has averaged 9.9 points, 3.9 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game.

He’s shooting 32.0% from beyond the arc and 39.5% from the floor.

For now, though, South Carolina is being cautious with his return, knowing it’s gotten pretty solid contributions across the board during the current winning stretch.

“We’ll look through this next week and see what that looks like next few practices and see what he looks like and then make a decision at that point,” Paris said.

South Carolina spreading the load

One thing South Carolina has done very well this season is spreading the responsibility for scoring and rebounding across several different players. It’s made the team tougher to topple.

Stop one guy and another guy might go off on you.

“Our team has never been built on one player having to do something crazy every game,” Paris said. “One, I don’t think it’s reproduceable or sustainable, so we’ve got a lot of guys. … We’ve got a lot of guys that can do something, that can make a play, that can make a shot.

“And it’s nice to be able to have that, because one thing it does it takes pressure off of guys that, there’s a lot of pressure on these guys, trust me. And then between social media and all the information that’s out there on each one of these guys, they put some pressure on themselves.”

Tennessee will get its chance to take on the well-rounded squad on Tuesday in a game that tips off at 6:30 p.m. ET in Knoxville, Tenn.