Everything Lamont Paris said after South Carolina's road loss at Kentucky

Following an 80-57 loss at Kentucky on Saturday, South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris spoke to the media after the game. Below is everything he had to say.

Opening statement: “Alright, that’s a tough one. They had a great crowd, great environment. That’s probably to be expected. We came in here two years ago, they had a great crowd, great environment, a good team, and we played well that day and won.”

“That game today, we didn’t play well. We didn’t play well enough. I thought there was one particular stretch in the second half where the lead was and it went to 20 it seemed like in the blink of an eye. Trying to get that settled down, that’s kind of been a microcosm of what’s happened to us in some instances, is that we have a stretch, it happened at Oklahoma, where in the second half it was a six-point game with six left and in a couple of minutes I look down and it’s almost 20.”

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“We’re continually trying to figure out what the decisions are. And the plays, even if they’re not decisions, just the physical plays that lead to those things happening. But they did some good things in the second half. Thought we did a good job in the first half defensively. We let a couple guys get away from us. We gave up some easy ones in the second half. They capitalized on that, and then we just weren’t able to keep pace offensively.”

“We didn’t make shots, we didn’t have guys that performed particularly well. Not to take anything away at all from what they did defensively, but we did have some guys that did not perform particularly well. That makes it it hard at this level, period. But you come into a place like this, couple of guys, I feel like, had it going, it was their day offensively and we didn’t have guys doing that.”

Question: Over the last couple games, Kentucky struggled defensively, but they were able to hold you guys to 57, can you talk about what you saw from them defensively today?

“Again, I alluded to that, I don’t want to take anything away from them, they were playing back at full staff I think. We had some real struggles. We got the ball around the basket some. We had some real struggles. I know there was four, I generally call layups, not like these are Mikan drill layups, but four ones that you’ve got to finish with a good player. We didn’t do that.”

“They were motivated, they had a lot of energy defensively. They were active, they were pressuring some of our guys that are maybe not quite as strong with the ball. I’d say that was probably a bit different. They were after it, they were trying to pressure the ball a little bit. But we also didn’t play particularly well.”

Question: Trent Noah was signed to you this time last year. Any hard feelings on how that turned out, and can you tell us about him as a person and a player, and what did you think of his performance today?

“Hard feelings, would someone would actually do that? Do you think someone would have hard feelings? This is 2025, I’ve done this a long time. There’s no hard feelings. It’s life. So yeah, certainly no hard feelings.”

“I was really focused on our team and what we needed to do. These possessions all matter, late in the game, we threw the zone out there, which can be a good tool for us, and we’re coaching. Guys have to get better, we’re going to play more games. So I really was focused on what we were doing. Sorry to disappoint you in my answer, but I really wasn’t focused centrically on Trent Noah.”

Question: Kentucky didn’t have Lamont Butler for the last three games, and he was limited before that. How much has he changed the dynamic in terms of trying to prepare and maybe not knowing if they’re going to have him or not?

“Well, I assumed they were going to play him. ‘Unavailable’ is the only one (designation) I pay a whole lot of attention to. This is just my opinion on the titles that we give these things. ‘Game day decision’, I don’t know. I’ve been in college, I know how I felt on game day. I felt like I was going to play on game day. Who’s the game day decision up to? Me? I’m playing. There’s ‘unavailable’ and then I make an assumption that everyone’s going to play. Sometimes they don’t.”

“But they wanted to win. They were going to put their best team out there if he was available. It didn’t surprise me that he played. But I think more than anything, aside from him being a good player, it also changes the dynamic of what some other guys are out there doing on the court. Maybe some guys are in some more natural roles. I think that’s probably the thing that I noticed the most.”

“He’s a competitor, he’s definitely a competitor. He’s started all these games for a reason. He helps them play their best version of basketball, probably on both ends of the court.”

Question: You guys are playing a really good Ole Miss team going into Wednesday. What kind of takeaways can you take from this game going into a team that shut down Kentucky last week? What’s that going to look like for you guys and how do you move forward going into Wednesday?

“Well, we focus on us. I don’t really anybody has the luxury of using the transitive property to their benefit. To say, ‘these guys did this against them, they did this against us, we ought to do this against them,’ right? I don’t even know who we play until somebody tells me. You’re going to think that’s crazy. I don’t know who we play until they tell me.”

“I spend most of my time, particularly in years where we’re struggling, in any facet of the game, trying to help our guys get as good as they can possibly get so that our product is as good as it can get. That takes a lot of time. I wouldn’t be a good coach if we didn’t spend any time on the opponent. We do that.”

“But the yeoman’s work is focused on what we do and how we can do that better. And even as we prepare for someone, it’s ‘how do we do our things better’ versus the zone that they do, against the pressure that they do, against the personnel that they have. It’s still ‘how can we get to a point where we’re able to get the way that we feel comfortable’, in spite of who or what the other team does. I’ll watch this game on the way home, I’ll probably watch it again tomorrow. And then at some point, I’ll move on to Ole Miss, as it were.”

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