Lamont Paris isn't satisfied with moral victories, which is a good thing. Here's why.
In sports, you are judged by wins and losses. Sometimes it’s not fair but that’s just the way it goes.
For South Carolina, wins haven’t come in bunches over the last few years. The Gamecocks went through some up and down years after the 2017 Final Four run, which led to Frank Martin’s firing. Enter Lamont Paris and his squad went 11-21 in his first year in 2022.
Now in Paris’ second year, he’s got South Carolina playing some great basketball. For the first time in a while, winning is becoming a thing again. There’s that feeling of this team being able to win every game it plays. And that’s a great mentality to have.
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But that’s not always going to be the case. Losses are bound to happen. In South Carolina’s case, its first loss of this year came at the hands of arch rival Clemson on Wednesday.
During his postgame press conference, Paris was asked if he took any pride in seeing his team fight until the end in what would be a five-point defeat. Here’s what he had to say:
“I don’t know. You’re trying to win a game here, you’re trying to win a game. We’re there to win the game. I mean, you were in a position to win the game. You did enough things. The general body of work, how you conducted your business, how you competed overall to win the game. You’re up at halftime, you’re up double figures in the second half. You did enough to win the game. So if you’re thinking of anything other than that, you’re in the wrong profession.
“We’ll go back to the lab and look at and evaluate some of these things. That’s a good team, they have a good team. And they earned their way into the top 25. They didn’t get there because somebody said Brad Brownell’s recruiting class was the best ever. They earned their way into the top 25 by performing. And they’ve got a good team. But we have a good team and we played relatively well for most of the game. Just weren’t able to finish it off.”
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This was exactly the right answer. To take a page out of Kobe Bryant’s playbook, what’s there to be happy about? South Carolina lost. The objective is to win. The Gamecocks should’ve won that game out in Clemson. Like Paris said, they played well defensively and even held an 11-point lead in the second half.
But eventually, things got out of hand, allowing the Tigers to storm back and get the win. For all that went right for the Gamecocks, a lot went wrong too. Outside of Meechie Johnson, the rest of the team shot 20 percent from three-point range. They were also out rebounded 42-38. And Clemson had 16 second-chance points, which Paris said wasn’t good enough to beat a good team like the Tigers are.
So in short, Paris said all the right things. It would be crazy not to be happy about being 7-1. But he knows his team had a real chance to win the game and couldn’t do so.
It’s a good thing to hear that South Carolina isn’t satisfied with moral victories. At the end of the day, they aren’t technically wins in the stat book. And the team will be better because of a game like this, knowing they had a chance to finish the job at hand.
You play to win the game. Plain and simple.
