MBB notebook: The numbers and reasons behind South Carolina's 12-20 season

South Carolina basketball’s season concluded with a 72-68 loss to Arkansas in the first round of the SEC tournament. Though the Gamecocks were invited to the NIT, Lamont Paris’ group declined the invite, shutting the door on a season that saw a few good moments but mostly disappointments.

The final men’s basketball notebook of the season will look back on what happened to get the Gamecocks here. The good, bad, and the ugly will all get a look under the microscope.

Stagnancy and damming the lane

If there was one visible, non-statistical change from last season to 2024-25, it was the lack of motion. More specifically, it was a clear stagnancy for an offense that had excellent spacing last year. That’s what happens when a team that relies on ball movement loses their “glue guy” point guard, a power forward that can shoot and space the floor, and a guard that can score from 30 feet or 3 feet.

Paris’ offensive philosophy needs three things. Those are a player who can captain a pass-first offense, shooters who can knock down threes reliably, and a big man who can space the floor. The Gamecocks had that with Ta’Lon Cooper, Meechie Johnson, Myles Stute, and B.J. Mack, respectively.

Unfortunately for the Gamecocks, Cooper and Mack exhausted their eligibility. Johnson transferred to Ohio State, where he left the program in December. Stute played less than half of the season before being sidelined with blood clots.

With Stute in particular, sometimes bad luck just happens. There’s no type of preventative measures to stop a player from getting deep vein thrombosis. Would Stute being completely healthy have turned South Carolina into a tournament team? Likely not, but it certainly would have helped.

For a tournament team to turn around and lose 20 games the next season, there has to be some bad luck involved. A quality team just doesn’t fall apart overnight. Per KenPom, South Carolina was 349th of 364 D-I teams in the site’s luck ratings. That’s, statistically, almost in the fourth percentile nationally.

The Gamecocks were 1-7 in games decided by four or less points. The season prior? They were 7-1. Flip those games and last year’s Gamecocks finish 20-14 and this season’s team goes 18-14. Sometimes a team gets unlucky. It happens. Of course, a basketball team that goes 2-16 in a conference screwed up elsewhere. But it’s not an insane statement to say that bad luck truly played a role in a historically bad season.

Going back to the offense, or lack thereof, the presence of B.J. Mack cannot be understated. Though Paris brought in Alabama transfer Nick Pringle in the offseason, the South Carolina native could not step outside of the paint and attract defenders the same way that Mack did. Mack’s 32.1 3PT%, while not elite, still warranted enough defensive attention to force opponents to leave the paint. That would create passing lanes and open up Gamecocks for looks both in the paint and beyond the arc.

With Pringle and Collin Murray-Boyles both lacking a consistent outside shot, opposing guards were free to focus on their assignments. Size mismatches were hard to come by for the Gamecocks backcourt. The extra pressure defensively on the perimeter led to a drop in 3PT% as a team.

Last season, South Carolina made 33.9% of their shots from deep. This season, that dropped to 31.6%, a mark that finished within the bottom four teams in the conference. Considering the team had four losses of three points or less, that’s a big deal.

Jamarii Thomas excelled at points as a scorer, but not in the same role that Ta’Lon Cooper filled a year earlier. While he was a reliable shooter from deep and had seven games of 18 or more points, he could not spread the ball around. That’s nothing against Thomas as a player, it’s just that his skill set would be maximized in a different offensive scheme. Paris’ offense is set in stone, and a pass-first guard like Cooper brought out the best in the scheme.

An inefficient offense and an inefficient defense are not mutually exclusive. Poor shooting and a bad showing on one end of the court will lead to lapses on the defensive end eventually. That’s just mental, that’s not even statistical. Anyone who has played basketball knows that momentum is very real and it’s more difficult to play elite defense when the offense is clicking.

It’s impossible to place a definite ceiling on a program, but last season’s output by the Gamecocks’ was truly representative of what a Lamont Paris playbook could accomplish. This season, the personnel on the court did not match up as well with what his offense prefers to do. Sometimes, it can be that simple. This offseason, it’ll be important to find round pegs for round holes and get back to executing the Paris playbook with the right players.

Quick hitters

Zachary Davis’ ability to get to the free throw line directly correlated with the Gamecocks’ fortunes. In 12 wins this season, Davis averaged 3.8 FTA/game and had a 68.2% FTAr. The latter stat puts Davis in the 98th percentile amongst players. But in losses, Davis only got to the line half as much, with 1.9 attempts per game. His FTAr dropped to 23.5%, or the 36th percentile.

Ironically, this was a complete reversal of last season’s results. In the 25 wins for the Gamecocks in which Davis played in 2023-24, he averaged 1.5 attempts per game. But in the eight losses, he bumped that up to 2.0 attempts per game. His FTAr was 43.2% in losses and 30.4% in wins.

The rest of the SEC had a record of 66-83 on the road this season. South Carolina’s road record was 1-10. They were the only team in the conference without multiple road wins.

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One thing that South Carolina excelled at this season was reduced charge calls on the offensive end. The Gamecocks only averaged 0.3 charges per game, a mark that ranked second in D-I and the 100th percentile.

South Carolina would often get beat in transition on the defensive end this season. Opponents scored 16.8% of their points on fast breaks against the Gamecocks. Not only was this the highest mark in the SEC, but the gap between South Carolina and the second-highest mark (Kentucky at 14.7%) was larger than the gap between Kentucky and the sixth-highest mark. (Auburn at 13.1%.)

Drawing fouls inside was another strength for the Gamecocks. They got to the line on 22.7% of their 2PT attempts, a rate that ranked fourth in the nation. Unfortunately, their FT% of 71.5% ranked 212th in the nation.

Of qualifying SEC players with a plus/minus below +50, Murray-Boyles had the highest defensive rebounding percentage at 23.8%. Nick Pringle was right behind him with 21.7% 

Arden Conyers was the only qualifying player in the SEC (>301 minutes played) with a plus/minus below -100. The redshirt freshman finished the year with a -105 plus/minus.

Murray-Boyles was uniquely effective at the rim, but not so much further out in the paint. His 74.7 FG% at the rim was 12.5% higher than average, but his 39.3% in the paint was below the national average. Farther out, however, Murray-Boyles hit on 42.3% of his midrange two attempts outside of the paint. This mark was 6.4% higher than the average D-I player.

The catch-all metric WARP (wins above replacement player) had Jordan Butler as the second-most valuable player on the Gamecocks with a 0.11/40 minutes mark.

South Carolina’s defense did not generate very much pressure, and the offense didn’t typically take advantage of what the defense did manage to force. The Gamecocks’ steal percentage of just 8.6% ranked 15th in the SEC, and the Gamecocks were last in the conference with just 10.9 points off turnover per game. To put that in perspective, every other team in the SEC averaged at least 12.4.

Finishing on a high note, the Gamecocks were just one of two teams in the conference to have a +100 margin on free throws compared to their opponents. South Carolina managed 140 more free throws made than its opponents, while SEC champs Auburn had a margin of -44.

What’s next?

Where does the program go after a lost season? Expect Paris to hit the portal. Jacobi Wright, Thomas, Stute, and Benjamin Bosmans-Verdonk are all out of eligibility. Collin Murray-Boyles is a likely first-round NBA Draft pick, though he hasn’t decided on his future yet. Though Pringle is a graduate student, his one-year JUCO stint means the center has another year of eligibility, though that too is undecided. Stute could come back too if the NCAA grants him another year of eligibility after he filed a medical hardship waiver.

The Gamecocks bring in a quartet of freshman recruits. Guard Eli Ellis, top 100 in the latest On3 ratings, should make an immediate impact. Three forwards, EJ Walker, Grant Polk, and Hayden Assemian, round out the class. All are ranked between 180-250 in the latest On3 rankings. Polk and Assemian are listed at 6’6″, while Walker stands at 6’8″.

Excluding any possible transfers out, that still leaves at least a couple of scholarships to fill. If there’s a void that Paris absolutely has to fill in the offseason, it’s a lead guard. Ta’Lon Cooper is not getting extra eligibility any time soon, but if the Gamecocks could get any player capable of filling half of his shoes in the same mold, that would do wonders for the Gamecocks offense.

Having a player who can be counted on to make an offense flow with accurate passes and the occasional open three is not impossible to find. There will be opportunities in the portal, which has morphed into a funnel for coaches to find the right puzzle pieces for their schemes. Three of the five members of the 2024-25 All-SEC team started their career at a mid-major.

Finding a big man who can shoot could be considered a luxury, and shooters are a high-priced commodity in the portal. But, like Waffle House does, the Gamecocks could promote from within. Jordan Butler looked like a completely different player at the end of the season than at the beginning of it. He had his best game of the season against Arkansas, playing physically and hitting a pair of triples. Getting a pure-shooting forward in the portal would be fantastic for this team, don’t get it wrong, but Butler with an entire offseason of bulking up and practicing isn’t the worst option this team could obtain.

Butler averaged 2.9 PPG, 1.9 RPG, and 0.9 BPG over just 13.1 MPG in the last eight games of the season. No, that’s not elite, or even starter-level, but he did make 30.6% of his threes this year. From a shooting standpoint, he was the best big option on the perimeter. Without Butler’s spacing against Arkansas, Murray-Boyles doesn’t set a career-high 35 points. This isn’t to say the Gamecocks should start the year with Butler manning the frontcourt, but he certainly improved throughout a rough season and his ceiling is quite high if he can bulk up.

Morris Ugusuk has a role in a Lamont Paris offense as long as he makes threes. And as luck would have it, he made 40.7% of them last year, much higher than any other Gamecock. Among qualifying players in the SEC with a 3PAr of 70.0%, only Brycen Goodine (43.4 3PT%) and C.J. Wilcher (41.8 3PT%) had higher marks from deep. That’s elite company.

Where did this improvement come from? Last year, Ugusuk shot 29.7% from beyond the arc. Despite a lower usage percentage compared to last year, the guard improved his box plus/minus from -1.7 to +1.8, going from a below-average player to a positive contributor. Over the last five games of the season, his turnover percentage dropped from 14.1% to 9.1%. Ugusuk had career games against Vanderbilt, Indiana, and Oklahoma, all tournament-caliber teams. Despite a loss to Florida, he still had a +12 plus/minus against arguably the best team in the country.

In a season that really ran out of positives, Ugusuk was a pleasant surprise. He’s a building block for the future. That, again, isn’t to suggest Butler and Ugusuk are capable of negating the handful of departures the Gamecocks stand to lose in the offseason. But the cupboard isn’t bare. There is potential.

Of course, this summer stands to be the most crucial offseason since the months after Frank Martin led the Gamecocks to the Final Four. Substantial talent needs to be brought in to compete in an ever-improving SEC, that much is clear.

Luck will (or at least should) regress to the mean. Going 1-7 in four-point games doesn’t happen two seasons in a row. If luck plays its part, Paris will need to as well, scouring the portal and finding pieces that will fit in his system.

There is no sugarcoating it, this season was a massive disappointment. But the pieces are there for improvement, and there is an opportunity to be had. On the bright side, the Gamecocks get a jump on the portal while the rest of the conference is burdened with participating in the NCAA tournament.

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