Scott Davis: South Carolina basketball forging a new path with Paris hire

South Carolina Basketball: News • Recruiting • Schedule • Roster • Stats • SEC • Polls

There are two ways a coaching search can end: Up-and-comer or tried-and-true.

Both approaches have pros and cons, both can result in success or failure, and neither is a guarantee of anything. Nick Saban to Alabama: Tried-and-true. Dabo Swinney promoted at Clemson: Up-and-comer. In related news, those two coaches have met in the College Football Playoff championship on multiple occasions. You just never know.

Athletics officials pressed the Up-and-Comer Button with the hire of Chattanooga’s Lamont Paris to lead the South Carolina basketball program following Frank Martin’s departure.

Paris slipped in quietly under the radar for most Gamecock fans, coming to Columbia after quickly turning the Mocs into an NCAA Tournament team. I’ll be the first to admit that I needed to glance at Paris’ Wikipedia page to get up to speed on his background.

There’s plenty to like there: Assistant coach at Wisconsin during a couple of Final Four runs, Southern Conference Coach of the Year in 2022, and the complete resurrection of the Chattanooga program from a 10-23 team in the ’17-’18 season to Southern Conference champions and NCAA Tournament participants this year.

Perhaps most interestingly, Paris’ hiring is a continuation of what appears to be a gradual shift in strategy for hiring coaches at South Carolina – a movement towards fresher faces over established names. Whether that strategy will pay off in the long run remains to be seen, but the last handful of major coaching searches here have resulted in the injection of new blood rather than wily veterans.

Of course, at 47, Paris is hardly a whippersnapper: He’s already a year older than Frank Martin was when arrived to take over the program in 2012 (at a time when Martin already had an Elite 8 appearance under his belt with Kansas State).

Still, he offers the tantalizing prospect of bringing something different, something unexpected and something new to a program sorely in need of a fresh start.

The McGee Method

When South Carolina hired the late Mike McGee as athletics director in the early ‘90s, the university embarked on a decades-long project to hire proven, recognizable coaches in its major sports.

McGee had a reputation for closing even the most aspirational and pie-in-the-sky candidates for open head coaching positions.

The only major McGee hire that could even remotely fall into the “up-and-comer” category was the selection of Brad Scott to lead the football program after the 1993 season, but even that decision seemed like a slam dunk: As impossible as it may now seem, Scott was the hottest assistant coach in the country at the time as the offensive coordinator of a Florida State powerhouse, and his hiring was greeted with reverence by the national media and with ecstasy by Gamecock fans.

As for the rest of McGee’s major hires, it’s a long list of some genuine college sports heavyweights. McGee tapped both Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier to lead the football program – arguably the two most legendary coaches in the game at the time of their arrivals. He hired a longtime proven winner in Dave Odom to lead the basketball program, and that came after he’d already hired a proven and well-known winner in Eddie Fogler to do the same.

In perhaps his most successful move, McGee poached Ray Tanner away from his alma mater, N.C. State, to coach the Gamecock baseball team, and we all know how that decision worked out: South Carolina baseball wins 2010 CWS on Whit Merrifield walk-off hit.

McGee’s successor as South Carolina AD, Eric Hyman, largely stuck to the “tried-and-true” method that his predecessor had employed. He nabbed Dawn Staley after she’d resuscitated Temple and reeled in Martin from Kansas State when his star was at its absolute apex (though it must be noted that Hyman’s one “up-and-comer” flirtation – the hiring of Western Kentucky’s Darrin Horn to lead the basketball program – ended disastrously).

After Tanner assumed the AD mantle, he’s taken a different approach, tabbing his longtime assistant Chad Holbrook to take over the baseball program at a time when Holbrook had never led a team, then placing the program in the hands of Mark Kingston, who had gradually improved teams at Illinois State and South Florida but didn’t bring much name recognition with him to Columbia.

Following the departure of Will Muschamp (the rare coach who could be considered neither an up-and-comer nor a tried-and-true name), Tanner rolled the dice with Shane Beamer – who had never even risen to the status of coordinator, much less led his own team – to take the reins of the football program.

With the hiring of Paris, Tanner seems to have officially moved on from the McGee Method, which had largely served as the blueprint for Gamecock athletics for nearly three decades.

It’s a new day indeed.

What Lies Ahead for South Carolina basketball?

So what does it all mean?

The question isn’t one we can answer with certainty. In fact, it should be obvious by now that there has been little rhyme or reason to what has worked and what hasn’t worked in filling South Carolina’s coaching slots for the last generation.

Up-and-comers Scott, Horn and Holbrook flamed out in spectacular fashion at South Carolina, but Shane Beamer seems to be off to a good start, and in terms of generating enthusiasm and hope amongst the fan base, he’s worked wonders in just over a year on the job.

Meanwhile, the success of Spurrier, Staley and Tanner would seem to suggest that the Tried-and-True Method is the way to go, but that’s been far less true in men’s basketball: Fogler won the SEC before his program gradually drifted into mediocrity, setting a template for what happened with Odom and Martin, where intermittent success was followed by near-permanent mediocrity, a .500-ish existence in the SEC and a lack of momentum in recruiting. In football, Lou Holtz won a few bowl games, but never came close to recreating the Notre Dame magic.

Your best hope, as always, in college sports is to find a younger star who can put his or her stamp on a program and stick around for years to come – Kryzezewski at Duke, Smith at North Carolina, Dooley at Georgia (or to use an example closer to home, Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech).

And now that he’s officially in Columbia, here’s hoping Lamont Paris will be here for many years to come.

Let me know what you think about South Carolina’s new basketball coach by writing me at [email protected].

• Discuss South Carolina basketball on The Insiders Forum

---