What Lamont Paris said after South Carolina's last-second loss to Vanderbilt

Following a 66-63 loss to Vanderbilt on Wednesday, South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris spoke to the media after the game. Below is a summary of what he had to say.

— Frustrating loss. South Carolina turned the ball over more than a third of a time that it had it. That’s unacceptable. It’s just going to be hard to win a game if you do that.

— The 25 turnovers came in conjunction with 11 second-chance points. You need all those things to happen if you’re going to turn the ball over a lot. They did cut the turnovers down from 16 to 9 after halftime. But you can’t turn the ball over like that.

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— 15 of those turnovers came off steals. They’ll have to go back to the drawing board and practice someone from behind smacking down at the ball really hard and then still keeping the ball to go up to the rim. The vast majority of the turnovers ended up that way. That’ll be on them as coaches to go back and practice being really strong with the ball.

— Hasn’t seen the go-ahead shot that Vanderbilt made with Nick Pringle being unable to grab the rebound that led to the play. Sometimes there’s a reason to give up an offensive rebound. For example, you had to help and you were out of position. He’ll have to look back at the play. They guarded the ball. Zach Davis was in a one-on-one defensive situation with AJ Hoggard. They got Hoggard to miss, so he doesn’t think they necessarily had to be in help. But they have to get that rebound. As a team, they have to find a way to get that rebound or knock it out of there.

— On the final shot of the game for South Carolina, they drew something up. They got a good look on a three-point shot that Morris Ugusuk took to potentially tie the game. But there in lies the problem with not just the offensive rebound but then South Carolina fouled on the go-ahead basket. Even with 0.6 seconds left, even in a two-point game, you have more options available. That’s the way the ole cookie crumbles.

— They have been and are about growth and improvement. They have seen some things over the last couple games that represent growth and improvement, particularly in the Auburn game. Today, he thinks they went backwards a little bit. The turnovers are what really stands out to him. They didn’t guard the ball at times and gave up easy layups, but there’s some of that that’s already baked into the equation of a basketball game. What’s not built into that equation is 25 turnovers. Thinks they went backwards a little bit in that way.

— He’s always optimistic. That’s why he’s frustrated to some degree because his expectation is for his team to play well enough to win these games. If he had a high school team, the state champions in the state of Tennessee or whoever, and he was coaching them against Vanderbilt, he probably wouldn’t have much frustration if they lost.

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— Again, he’s extremely optimistic. They’re doing this without Jamarii Thomas who plays the most minutes on the team and is the second leading scorer, along with Myles Stute is also out. But guys have to play. Ugusuk stepped up and played well today. You just need more guys to be able to do that.

— It seemed like everybody on Vanderbilt was forcing steals. It was a group effort. He’s been around the game and there’s certain things that logic plays a role in some things. He hasn’t seen that many clean strips before. It’s not even that they were clean strips, it’s more so relative to where the guy is who strips away the ball. There’s plenty of positions where you could do that from. Ones from behind are difficult to do. Once South Carolina beat Vanderbilt by way of driving down the floor, the Commodores were able to reach in and take the ball away. They do a really good job of that.

— On the shot clock violation before Vanderbilt took the lead for good, Pringle has the ball right underneath the rim and they don’t get it up to the rim. Because of that, it ends up being a shot clock violation. It got stripped out of his hands and off his head and went out of bounds. Even if it was South Carolina’s ball, it was still going to be a shot clock violation.

— At the end of the day, you have a good player with the ball and both feet in the paint. He was in an advantageous position but they just didn’t convert. That was Collin Murray-Boyles in the same position. Both feet in the charge arc, under the basket, with an advantage and they don’t end up getting anything out of that. So those plays end up hurting.

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