AD Jeremiah Donati confident in Lamont Paris but knows there's work to do for future

Things haven’t been going well for South Carolina men’s basketball in recent weeks. In Lamont Paris’ third season as head coach, the Gamecocks are under .500 and 0-8 in SEC play going into February.

It’s a far cry from this time last year when the program was in the midst of one of its best seasons to date, having just knocked off a top-five Tennessee team in Knoxville and winning 26 games. Times have certainly changed, especially in a conference that has become the sport’s toughest this season.

Back in 2014, the SEC was only a three-bid league for the NCAA Tournament. Fast forward to present day, ESPN’s updated Bracketology features 13 of the conference’s 16 teams. South Carolina is nowhere close to being in the mix with 10 games to go in the regular season.

While it’s been a departure from last year’s success, new South Carolina athletics director Jeremiah Donati has full confidence in Paris.

“I’ll tell you, I think Lamont can really coach,” Donati said during an in-studio appearance at 107.5 The Game with Jay Philips and Elijah Campbell. “And I think that his brand of basketball, even with some of the injuries we’ve seen us really give some of the best teams in the country everything they can handle. Probably could have, should have won those games. And so that’s encouraging, if you’re a Gamecock fan. I feel like we do have a coach who can coach.”

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Although Paris was hired by South Carolina under former AD Ray Tanner in 2022, Donati believes he can get the program back to where it was a season ago. And if there’s any question about his future in Columbia, Donati affirmed Paris isn’t going anywhere. It still hasn’t been a full calendar year since he received a new six-year contract after winning the SEC’s Coach of the Year award.

“It’s not a matter of if Lamont’s coming back,” Donati said, “it’s how can we better support him?”

Donati plans to meet with Paris next week to discuss a plan moving into next season. He said they’ll also talk about revenue sharing, which will allow schools to share a portion of their athletic department revenue with their student-athletes.

From Donati’s standpoint of watching the team, he brought up an interesting question: “Do we have a talent gap?” South Carolina went into the transfer portal last offseason and brought in Jamarii Thomas, Nick Pringle and Jordan Butler. In addition, Paris flipped four-star guard Cam Scott from Texas to South Carolina as the centerpiece of his 2024 signing class. But even with all the newfound talent, it hasn’t translated to success on the court.

“I think we’ve got some good players,” he said. “I think we clearly probably didn’t have the depth that we needed to compete in night in and night out. That’s a little evident that we’re seeing that in real time.”

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During the team’s eight-game losing streak, they’ve lost four games by a combined 12 points, all coming against current AP Top 25 teams. Then they’ve lost the other four games by double digits, with three of those losses coming by 20 or more points.

After this season, South Carolina will lose five players who are out of eligibility, with the possibility of others moving on to the next level or transferring. So, there’s a good chance next year’s roster will look much different. But that gives Donati and Paris an opportunity to reassess where things stand and build better for the future.

“We need some more depth. I can tell you that’s probably one thing that we’ll be looking and making sure that the roster’s strong because I don’t expect or I don’t anticipate a big drop off in the league next year,” Donati said.

“We’ve got some key pieces that we think we can bring back. If you can do that and continue to build this and bring in some new guys, I think we like what we see. But we certainly have some more work to do. I’ve been just really impressed, even with some of this hard luck. We’ve continued to battle, and we’ve found ourselves in these games.”

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