Lamont Paris shares what made this South Carolina team special

South Carolina entered the 2023-24 season picked to finish dead last in the conference in the preseason. Fast forward a few months and the Gamecocks had finished just one game shy of winning the conference title.

How did it all happen? Coach Lamont Paris explained after his team’s first-round NCAA Tournament exit following a loss to Oregon.

“It started with who they are as individuals. There’s such a high-quality group of human beings,” Paris said. “It would be hard for me to overstate that. That’s relative — I’ve done this a long time. I think it started there. Then it’s how they interact with each other, because you could have great guys, high-quality guys that it just, you know, it just doesn’t translate when it comes to how they mesh together. And it did. It did, in an incredible way.”

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The Gamecocks had a quality group of players, led by guard Meechie Johnson. Johnson averaged 14.1 points. Freshman Collin Murray-Boyles emerged as a potential future star with 10.4 points and 5.7 rebounds per game.

But the rest of the roster was supplemented by players who probably played above their skill level. Forward BJ Mack helped complement Murray-Boyles in the frontcourt, while guard Ta’Lon Cooper was as clutch as they came in key moments.

It was the overall chemistry that made it all tick, though.

“That really is what made this group able to do what they did on the basketball court,” Paris said. “If you look, certainly our guys were better than what people predicted they would be, but they also probably weren’t just the best individual talents at every position that we had. But they were winners. They are winners that came together. They’re incredible, fierce — incredibly fierce competitors, and they came together with one goal, and they did that in a way that each of their individual abilities shined.”

South Carolina will feel great about its program going forward under Paris after experiencing the biggest turnaround in conference record year over year among Power Six conference teams.

Paris appears to be building a sustainable winner.

But one thing that may not prove as easy to replicate is this team’s bond. They were incredibly tight and that was reflected in how they played on the court.

So Paris will cherish this South Carolina group, even though the season ended a little earlier than he would have liked.

“In my experiences, it’s not the basketball component of it that allows you to do this,” Paris said. “It ends up these other things that ultimately manifest themselves in a basketball game. But it has very little to do with how fast our guys run or how high they jump or the passing or shooting. It has very little to do with that and certainly isn’t because I have some magic play. But it always starts from within, and this group had all those characteristics and then some.”