Lamont Paris shares message to South Carolina players during media timeouts

Lamont Paris led the South Carolina Gamecocks to another victory earlier this week, continuing their winning ways by virtue of defeating Ole Miss in a 68-65 nail-biter.

It took a lot for Paris to lead South Carolina to another win, having to be at his best against the Rebels. Afterwards, he explained to the media what he was relaying to the Gamecocks during timeouts, providing a look behind the glass into his motivational tactics.

“That’s probably what I was saying, just survive the punches, for the most part. Round it up, tighten it up defensively now, come on. And we were able to a little bit, they were at one point on track with seven-something (minutes) left in the game to score a lot of points and we tightened it up a little bit defensively,” Paris explained. “So I did, we were just at that point. The body of work is what it is, you gotta find a way to get through the next thing, right? And just rallying guys around, and getting guys attention. There’s so many things going on and getting them ready and not overreacting.

“I didn’t want to overreact because we had to do something else next and the outcome of the game could have been potentially riding on the fact that they needed to be listening rather than thinking still about what happened 45 seconds ago.”

Regardless, it worked for Paris and the Gamecocks, and South Carolina continued their dream season as SEC play rages on. It’s a hard conference to play in, but Paris and his team are proving they’re for real day-in and day-out.

Moving forward, Lamont Paris and South Carolina will be hoping for more victories and continued awesome play from the team, as the Gamecocks turn their attention to Vanderbilt over the weekend.

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Continuing, the Gamecocks are the fastest team to get to 20 wins in the conference this season and are tied with Alabama and Auburn for the top spot in the current SEC standings — and Lamont Paris believes a win like Tuesday’s will go a long way in helping South Carolina achieve its ultimate goal with the postseason right around the corner. 

Paris explained what that process is going to look like in the coming weeks, as he was in a good mood after the victory.

“There are things that these guys can accomplish if they really, really, really want to,” Paris said postgame. “If they really, really decide that they’re going to, there’s some things that they can accomplish. It will start with watching film and looking ourselves in the mirror and saying, ‘Oh wow, I did that. That’s not what I normally do. Oh, wow, this is crazy. We can change that, and we can change that right there too,’ and hopefully growing from that. 

“We’ve got to be focused on growth. That’s been my thing since I’ve been here is we’re constantly trying to grow. We’ve had tremendous amounts of growth throughout the season. Last year, if anybody remembers way back when, tremendous amount of growth. We’re growth oriented and we want to continue to grow and then once we hit our peak at some point, you want to ride it off into the sunset.”

Lamont Paris said that he isn’t sure when that day might come — but he sure hopes it isn’t until deep in tournament season. Time will tell.