South Carolina has voids to fill at starting guard spots. Who steps in?
It’s one thing to replace talent. In this day and age of college basketball, it’s a much simpler process with high school recruiting and the transfer portal.
But it’s another thing to replace the heart and soul of a team. After last season, South Carolina was dealt some big blows losing three of its veteran starters. Especially in the backcourt, Ta’Lon Cooper and Meechie Johnson are no longer around.
Both guards paired well together with Johnson led the team in points per game, while Cooper was on the floor more than anyone else. The Gamecocks not only lost two talented players but also guys who provided valuable experience and leadership qualities.
“Obviously, the two guys that we lost last year were incredibly experienced not only in college basketball but at high major basketball,” head coach Lamont Paris said. “Ta’Lon played a lot of minutes at Minnesota before he came here and played the most minutes on our team last year. Meechie Johnson was in a similar boat.”
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Now, as South Carolina gears up for its first season without Cooper and Johnson, Paris is trying to figure out what he will be getting from his returning and new guards on the team.
“I feel good right now about what we’re doing all over the board,” he said. “We’re just trying to learn. … We’ve been with the guys over the summer, but you’re trying to teach terminology and just the culture with how we go about doing things.”
Fortunately, the Gamecocks still have a plethora of talent at the position. Jacobi Wright, Zachary Davis and Myles Stute, who combined to make 35 starts last year, are all back and could easily fill the giant void left behind. But they also have others from last year’s squad who didn’t play much, if at all, like Morris Ugusuk, who played in 30 games, and Austin Herro and Arden Conners, who each redshirted as freshmen.
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From a recruiting standpoint, Paris brought in Jamarii Thomas, a senior guard who was the MEAC Player of the Year at Norfolk State in 2023-24 after averaging a career-high 16.7 points. The other big add-on was Cam Scott, a highly-touted high school recruit who flipped from Texas to South Carolina back in April.
South Carolina also has a pair of incoming freshmen guards joining the team in Weston Coggeshall and Lance Piper.
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With a little under a month until the season opener, it’s still unclear what the starting five will look like from a guard standpoint. But that’s what this preseason has been about: finding out what this group can become as things start to morph together.
“It’s a great opportunity for some other guys coming in, some of which were here and some of which are new faces,” Paris said. “It’s just been fun trying to figure out what that looks like as we get closer to games. But certainly nothing is decided yet. But it’s competitive, a really competitive group.”
