What Lamont Paris said after South Carolina's big win over No. 25 Clemson

Following a 91-88 win over No. 25 Clemson, head coach Lamont Paris spoke to the media about South Carolina’s performance on Tuesday and what this victory means going forward. Here’s what he had to say.

— That was fun, interesting, exciting. All of the above. Really excited for the guys to have that kind of expreicne. It was a great atmosphere. There was so much adversity to fight through. The team showed some real character to channel the right energy to focus up and find a way to win. This is what college basketball is all about.

— The players deserve that win. You need that type of game for growth. He could hear how they were excited they were from the coaches’ locker room.

— Myles Stute is a worker. He has a process. He shoots the ball well because he has a process. There’s no lack of belief. There’s been some lack of performance from his stand point. But Paris still believes in his shooting capabilities.

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— They talk all the time about being ready. Everyone has to be ready. Had some guys who had their numbers called tonight with others getting into foul trouble. It’s hard to say any person didn’t play a big role in this game. References how BBV secured a potential game-winning rebound in the final seconds. He was ready to go out there and do that. Applauds all those guys for their efforts.

— He’s always believed that the advantage goes to the team that’s not disappointed about the extra overtime period. He feels there’s a real advantage to that, particularly when that comes off the heels of some self-inflicted wounds. When you make some mistakes, it’s easy to focus on those and not get to the next play. You’re going to be tempted to hit a grand slam. At the end of regulation, they did want to foul Chase Hunter if they were up three. If they were up four, they weren’t going to foul. It easily could’ve cost them but it didn’t. It will help them grow.

— He knew Hunter was cooking in the second half. But there’s so many things that were happening, especially when you’re in a foul trouble situation. You’re processing so much information in those moments. There’s really not a lot of time to get caught up in how guys are performing. This is in reference to CMB and Hunter having great games for each team.

— They’ve gotten better as a team. This team would be judged by the growth they would make. This was going to be a team that he would encourage people to judge based off growth. This team has a really high ceiling. It’s been incremental, steady, consistent growth.

— Nick Pringle has had some good games as of late. They try to stay true to what they do. They’ve got a variety of plays specifically for him to catch the ball on the block and do something. You forget how young these guys are. It’s exciting to see the growth that goes with that. He’s gotten so much better as an individual player.

— They had some good wins last year. Hates to throw the word ranking out. But as far as rankings and achieving, he wants the voting committee to get it right at the end of the year. At the end of the day, once they got ranked eventually last year, they never were not ranked after that. They aren’t there this year. But they are getting there. They ratcheted up the schedule this year, for sure. Thoguht this was a very important game for that reason. You want to make sure you schedule hard for a reason and reap the benefits for some of that. It’s great to get this win to go into conference play.

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— This win builds true confidence. There’s a such thing as false confidence. This is real confidence because they know the team is good. They see who they are, how they compete, who they’ve beaten. This breads real, true confidence.

— It was great to see a huge crowd tonight. His anticipation was that they would have a great crowd but his expectations were exceeded. It says a lot about the student body. Even without the full compliment of the student body, the community showed up. That was inspirational to the players. You want to win for your fans. They came, they cheered. They rode the highs and the lows with you. You want to win badly for the fanbase. Glad they did that.

— Viktor Lahkin is a good player for Clemson. USC attacked him offensively. Pringle was his matchup most of the time. They made some strong moves against him and put him in jeopardy of fouling, which he did. Just by attacking him, it neutralized him as a shot blocker.

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