Lamont Paris, we meet again

South Carolina has a new head basketball coach this season. You’ll see him pacing in front of the away team’s bench in Rupp Arena tonight. Name’s Lamont Paris. He seems like a nice guy. He’s from Findlay, Ohio; went to the same high school as my wife; probably loves Dietsch’s ice cream, a Findlay treat. I love Dietsch’s. We served Dietsch’s chocolates to the guests at our wedding. I should’ve invited Lamont Paris to welcome him to the Southeastern Conference.

So far in the Southeastern Conference, Paris’ first season is off to a slow start. His Gamecocks are winless through two league games and 7-8 overall headed into tonight’s contest in Lexington. Before South Carolina, he spent five seasons at Chattanooga where the Mocs went 3-15 in the SoCon in Paris’ first year and 14-4 with SoCon regular season and tournament championships and a spot in the NCAA Tournament in his fifth. Remember that wild buzzer-beater in the SoCon championship game? Or how Chattanooga almost upset Illinois in the first round? It’s how Paris got the gig replacing Frank Martin.

Now let’s look deeper into Paris’ career, one that includes a villainous past with Kentucky Basketball. You see, before Paris coached the Gamecocks and before his rise at Chattanooga, he came up under Bo Ryan at Wisconsin in the early 2010s through Ryan’s sudden mid-year retirement in 2015-16.

You know, those Wisconsin teams.

Paris had a front-row seat for Aaron Harrison’s buzzer-beater in the 2014 Final Four:

A year later, Paris had the best seat in the house for Nigel Hayes’ blatantly obvious shot-clock violation with a little under three to go in the 2015 semifinal game. A man of integrity with Paris’ vantage point would’ve stepped forward and told the official (the one I’m not allowed to name, per the court system) that Hayes’ game-tying basket was well after the shot clock expired. But Paris ignored that atrocity to the spirit of basketball while applauding his Badgers, those Badgers, on the darkest night in Kentucky Basketball history.

Lamont Paris was one of them. There’s a whole column titled, “How Wisconsin shaped new UofSC basketball coach Lamont Paris.”

Gross.

Paris loved him first

One more Lamont Paris/Kentucky connection: In the months after Paris’ team cheated its way to second place in 2015, he recruited a young Wisconsonian named Tyler Herro to play basketball in Madison. Paris found the bucket before the bucket became a bucket, and in September 2016, Herro committed to the Badgers.

But then one good thing Paris has done for Kentucky Basketball (other than holding that L in 2014), he left Wisconsin for Chattanooga after securing Herro’s commitment, which later led to Herro flipping his commitment from Wisconsin to Kentucky. If not for Paris leaving the Badgers, who knows, maybe Herro stays home for college and the butterfly effect takes over.

(His assist with Herro does not forgive the 2015 Final Four, though.)

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So now when someone asks you, “Hey, who’s South Carolina’s new head coach? I forgot.” You’ll know more than, “I think he came from Chattanooga?”

Now you know the pain Paris’ coaching past put Big Blue Nation through and you may recognize the traces of Wisconsin basketball in this new chapter of South Carolina.

Go Cats by a million tonight for redemption against Lamont Paris and because Kentucky needs it, obviously.