Lamont Paris shares challenges of defending Brandon Miller

South Carolina resides near the bottom of the SEC standings in the first year of head coach Lamont Paris’ rebuild in Columbia. yet they nearly picked off Alabama this week to give the Tide just their second loss of the conference slate. Star freshman wing Brandon Miller had other ideas, popping off for 41 points, including the shot to send the game to overtime and the layup that ultimately won the game for ‘Bama in overtime. That’s one of the best players in the country coming up huge in the game’s biggest moments.

Afterwards, Coach Paris was asked what he thought of the Gamecocks’ defensive efforts on Miller, to which he had a sort of strange answer. Paris thought his team definitely gave up a few looks they shouldn’t have, but also admitted that he’s simply hard to guard, even if his guys forced him into some tough looks.

“The game plan was just to try to make the shots as difficult as you could and play your rules. He earned a lot of those,” said Paris. “We gave him a couple. We fell asleep one time and we didn’t guard him. He got another 3 in the zone. Why is he hard to stop? That’s … I don’t know. He’s really good. He’s long. He’s talented and athletic. He’s going to be playing next year for a team that’s going to be playing him a lot of money if he chooses to. He’s a good finisher. He finished with his left hand two times late in the game to win the game. He’s a hard guy to guard.”

Aside from being unable to contain Miller, Lamont Paris actually credited his team for putting the clamps on the rest of the Alabama players. Even with the overtime period and a crazy scoring outburst from Brandon Miller, South Carolina still held the Tide to one of their lower totals on the year.

“But I don’t get as much into that as writers do. He could’ve scored 39 instead of 41 and it’s different deal. Someone else could’ve scored a lot of points. He’s really good and so it makes sense to talk about the fact that he had a bunch of points. He had a bunch of points in a game that they scored less even in overtime than what they’re averaging. Us as a unit, I think we did a good job defensively against them.”

You hate to take a moral victory, but for a team like South Carolina, taking the No. 2 team in the country to the brink registers as an encouraging performance, even if the loss counted just the same as their others.