Lamont Paris satisfied with effort despite loss to Missouri

It isn’t often you lose eight straight conference games and your coach comes away singing your praises, but such is the case for South Carolina. Coach Lamont Paris was satisfied with his team’s effort in a recent 83-74 loss to Missouri.

The Gamecocks were competitive, just days after pushing a very good Arkansas squad to the brink in one-possession game.

“At the end of the day I don’t really have any complaints about our total effort in terms of what we were doing and how we were going about our business,” Paris said. “I thought that was good.”

The first-year South Carolina head coach further expanded on that, as well.

Essentially, Missouri just converted opportunities at a higher clip than South Carolina did, thus earning the win.

“I really liked a lot of things about what our guys did today,” Paris said. “I thought our effort was really good. The effort in general was good, and not just effort as in trying, just the total body of work I thought was pretty good in terms of how we went about our business and some of the things we did in attacking and sharing the ball. The guys executed the plan. They did. They did a good job of that.”

Lamont Paris satisfied with effort, execution still needs work

While the first-year coach gave a passing grade to the team’s effort, he wasn’t entirely satisfied with the outcome.

There were a few key factors that could have made a difference in the end result.

“Free throws got us. Missed seven I think in the second half, at least one was the front end of a one-and-one,” Paris said. “They shot 50% from the 3-point line, which is not typical for most college basketball teams. And they shoot the ball a lot. Some of it was the looks we gave them, but they also stepped up and made some shots.”

South Carolina will be back in action looking to halt its eight-game skid when it takes on Ole Miss on the road on Saturday. The game will tip off at 1 p.m. ET on the SEC Network.