Lamont Paris uses golf analogy to describe upcoming schedule in the SEC

With the non-conference schedule complete for South Carolina, Lamont Paris is ready to hit the links in the SEC.

Paris was asked last night about the Gamecocks’ approach to league play with them tipping it off this weekend. In his answer, he described it like a round of golf where they’ll just have to play it one hole at a time and learn to deal with the ones that go over par.

“I think you do have to be able to get on – to use the golf analogy again, I think you have to get from one hole to the next hole, right,” said Paris. “Coincidentally enough, we play 18 league games and there’s 18 holes in a round of golf. You may bogey the first hole, alright. I think there’s a couple bogeys that are baked into a really good score for a regular mo like me on the golf course. I mean, if you’re a pro, maybe you can’t bogey too many. But I think there’s some bogeys that are built in and you can, you can recover from those bogeys but you’ve got to be able to get to the next hole.”

“If you’re thinking about the first bogey and then so now you’re trying to get a birdie or an eagle on the next hole, you’re likely to do something really bad – double bogey, maybe,” Paris explained.

The Southeastern Conference could be having one of their all-time best seasons. In South Carolina’s case, they’ll be playing a dozen games against teams that are currently in the AP Poll. That includes each of their first three at No. 17 Mississippi State, against No. 5 Alabama, and versus No. 2 Auburn. Then, after one game between against a team in Vanderbilt that’s 12-1 right now, they’ll play three more at No. 12 Oklahoma, versus No. 6 Florida, and then Mississippi State again. They’ll also be playing against the Gators once more as well as Texas A&M, at Kentucky, Ole Miss, Arkansas, and at Tennessee among other that could become games against rated opponents.

With that, the Gamecocks just have to play their game. They’ll handle each opponent as they come and try to sink as many putts as they can when they come.

“Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, as far as our preparation, not too much. I think it’ll still be trying primarily to focus on us doing the things that make us a good team well. And then tweaking those things relative to who we play and how they play,” said Paris. “I think that’ll be the only change in mentality…When you get a league like this, I think it’s one game to the next and you start to just count how many games you can win.”

The SEC is about to be a long stretch with it being a night-in and night-out challenge for their teams. That’s why Paris wants his team to stay calm with a front and back nine full of opportunities out there for them on the course

“I think that mentality when the league is this good and you have this many Quad 1 opportunities? You’re going to have to be able to turn the page from one game to the next,” Paris said. “It’s not to mean that you don’t care, it’s not to be that you don’t learn from it but you can’t let it affect your next performance. You just can’t. I think they’re all such good, tough, hard games that I think, you know, you’re going to always say, ‘Phew, we lost to a really good team.'”

“Because of that, you’ve got to get to the next page and play the next game.”