Everything Lamont Paris said after South Carolina's SEC Tournament loss

Following a first-round SEC Tournament loss to Arkansas, South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris spoke to the media in Nashville on Wednesday. Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening statement

“I told the guys in the locker room that I’m not sure what the favorite day of the season is. There’s a bunch of candidates. First day, league game, all that, tournament time. I know what the worst day is. It has arrived. But really proud of my team, of the team of guys that are in there and the way that they responded, the coaching, the way they allowed me to coach them. People talk about being resilient. Someone goes on a two-game losing streak, they win a game, somebody says, ‘What did you learn about your team?’ How resilient they were. This is a resilient group to have a lot of close calls and not have the successes that they wanted to in terms of wins, and still know and believe that that’s a real thing for us. Then, to go to practice every day with that in mind, come out in the games and play the way they continued to play. Really proud of them for that. We got behind in this game. We dig too big of a hole, ultimately, as it turns out. Got the thing turned the way we needed to, had some opportunities, maybe ran out a little bit of gas at the end. Again, I think the way the game was played was a microcosm of who these guys are as competitors and getting the game back to a manageable place to where we ultimately really believed that we would win the gam. Really good squad. Even rivals last year’s squad. This is a really good team. We just couldn’t figure out late-game situations. Especially in away games. I would say we wouldn’t be hanging our heads on this year. There’s a lot to learn from this year, especially going into next year.”

You were able to erase a pretty big deficit, get it down to one. What do you attribute your ability to be able to get back in this game in the manner you?

“I agree with Collin. I think a lot of it was just defensively there was a different level of, I don’t know, not only attention to detail, but I think just in general our urgency, there was a different urgency. I told the guys at halftime if 23 was the number of points that they ended up scoring in the second half, then I really, really liked where we were going to be if that was the number and that that wasn’t a hope for me, that I hoped we would hold them to 23, I believed that we could have held them to 23 in the second half. That was a real challenge. Your mind as you go out there should be focused on that type of effort and commitment to was happening on the defense end. And they did. That was part of it. Also, because of some of those turnovers, we got good looks in transition. We did stuff in the halfcourt, too. We had a lot of plays we could have made right around the basket and some other things. I don’t think from a performance standpoint we broke any sort of records. The guys really stuck with it. They stuck with it. Just continued to get a stop. I don’t know how many stops we had in a row. It seemed like a bunch. We needed a bunch. I think it started with the defensive side with us to really sink into what was happening, what was going on in ball screens, how quickly we had to make some of our decisions and rotations. Unfortunately, we didn’t do that in the first half a little earlier. It changes the landscape of what you’re doing in the second half.”

You heard what Coach Cal mentioned when I told the players. He says that your record might not equate to how good you guys are. Have you had time to think about that? On the worst day of the year, like you say, if that’s any solace.

“Yeah, I mean, these guys are competitors. It’s funny you hear him say that, right? They don’t want to be in another league. You guys would have been good in another… What does that even mean? We’re in this league. This is the best league in the history of college basketball, they’re saying by any metric you would like to choose, including your eyeballs. They wanted to be in this league. This is the league they’re in. There’s another world. There’s not another world where we need to play in a league in order to win games. There’s a world in which we play in this league, and those games go our way. Last year, we were 8-2 in similar games. This year, we weren’t. There were some things that we didn’t pick up on quickly enough in order to win those close games. There can be reasons why some teams win a lot more of those games. Some teams don’t. Experience in certain positions might be part of it. I don’t think I would do the disservice to these guys of sort of… I don’t know if we played – no disrespect for the SoCon, I was in it for five years – if we played in the SoCon, we would have a better record. We’re in the SEC. We play SEC teams. We played a lot of SEC teams in a way where at one point in the game, they thought the game was over. They thought they were going to lose the game. We weren’t able to get to the finish line.”

Do you have any personal feel on what Collin is thinking? When you have your opportunity to talk with him and his family, do you believe he’s ready to go ahead and make the step to the next level? With the way things are now, the deal you could offer him, do you think it would be enough to entice him to come back?

“Yeah, I mean, I don’t know what he’s thinking, first. Second of all, we just got done with a difficult season that our guys should get a lot of credit. I mean, I don’t know if people know anybody — it used to be 18 to 22. Now you say it’s 17 to 26 is the window of the age of these guys. I don’t know if you know many young people in that group. Generally speaking, they’re pretty quick to pivot if there’s adversity in front of them. This team had a lot of adversity, and they refused to pivot anywhere. I give them a lot of credit for that. Like, I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about any of that stuff. There will be a lot of people that will be making a decision on whether they’re going to go to the draft or stay. Certainly, there are more incentives to stay in college these days than there have been. I’ve always believed this is about these young men, trying to help them. When their opportunity is the right opportunity, they should do exactly what’s the best that they believe is the best for them. If I can provide a little advice for him, it won’t be slanted in any direction. That’s just not who I am. I’m not that selfish. If I can provide any intel or advice that will help him ultimately when it comes time to make a decision, I will do that.”

You’ve mentioned you’ll have your end-of-season meetings with the guys. What is the process for you when you’re trying to figure out who’s leaving, how you want to figure out the roster, who might be coming back?

“Yeah, it’s completely different than it was way back 365 days ago. Obviously, when you look back two, three years ago, things are completely different. Decisions on both sides are being made and are based on different things than they have been. The one thing that’s a little bit unfortunate is a lot of these decisions might end up being… There are probably some business decisions that are going to be made across the country. Does it make it feel a little more transactional? Absolutely. In some circumstances, it will make those meetings easier. So we’ll start those. I don’t even know when. It will be soon. They’re starting sooner and sooner. We’ll start those meetings soon, and we’ll, like with anything we do, lead with honesty. People will come to conclusions and decisions.”

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