Lamont Paris explains what South Carolina needs to tweak before SEC play
It’s been a great start to the season for head coach Lamont Paris. South Carolina is off to one of its best starts in program history, sitting at 9-1.
But Paris knows there’s always room for improvement. With SEC play on the horizon, the Gamecocks still need to take care of some housekeeping items. They’ll have three more home games in non-conference play to close out this month.
“I use a lot of golf analogies with our guys, but one of them is Tiger Woods when he was playing really well. I don’t think when he went into the opening round that he perceived that he was playing against Sergio Garcia specifically if that’s who he was matched up on the first tee box or Phil Mickelson. He was playing against the golf course,” Paris said.
“And so, what did that mean for him? He didn’t have to score lower than any one of those guys. He had to try to hit as many greens in regulation as he could, which started with as many fairways as he possibly could.”
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Paris said that’s the mentality his team is trying to build towards. His team can only control what they can control on the floor. And that’s how they’ve been able to string together a lot of wins so far.
With a lot of new faces on the roster, everyone has seemed to mesh well. The starting lineup, which has featured four new transfers, has remained the same for all 10 games, which says a lot about how things have gone.
As it stands, South Carolina has two players averaging double-digits. Meechie Johnson leads the team with 18.1 points per game, while BJ Mack follows him with 15.6 points.
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However, it’s not just scoring that this team is doing. It’s also how they’re playing defensively. The Gamecocks rank just outside the top 50 in scoring defense, allowing 65.3 points per game. Albeit, they haven’t forced a ton of turnovers with just over 10 per game. But there’s no denying how much better they’ve looked on that end of the floor.
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So over these next three games, Paris will be looking to tweak some things his team does to be ready for a higher level of competition. South Carolina will face 11 teams ranked inside the KenPom top 100 in SEC play.
“We do a lot of self scouting. We didn’t go to boards here. Look at this decision here. It had nothing to do with what they did. But this is just the decision we’ve normally made this decision better. Okay, let’s get better at that. This is a ball screen coverage. Look at our rotation. Look how late we decided to get over here for this rotation. Normally, it’s a full half second, which makes a big difference, amazingly enough, but a full half second, we move quicker than that,” Paris said.
“And so honestly, that’s what I’m most concerned about is what’s our product look like as we go into SEC play? Can you continue to fine tune, and trust me we want to win the games. At one point that will take precedent over everything else — winning a single game. But ultimately, we do want to have our best product. So we’re just on a mission to try to continue to improve.”
