Everything Lamont Paris said after South Carolina's loss to Tennessee

South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris spoke with the media following the Gamecocks’ Senior Night loss to No. 23 Tennessee on Tuesday at Colonial Life Arena.

Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening Statement

“I’ll keep it short today, honestly, and just kind of let you guys navigate this and determine where we go with it, but, you know, obviously senior night. Obviously, disappointed in how the game went, but a good group that we had of senior that year, and yeah.”

Just basketball-wise, how did the game get away from you guys so quickly? Was it just their height starting to take advantage that early, or just hitting shots?

“Yeah, I mean, I think, honestly, I’ve played well and been down 12 at halftime before. So, it was actually another game that, as I looked in there, it’s like, ‘How are we down 12?’ We didn’t play well, some coverages…just some coverages. And, there’s some shot making, too. I mean, one of their guys that doesn’t make a lot of threes comes out and strokes the very first one. Like, you got to perform. But we had a couple of coverages that we blew. We had one in transition that was crazy, that we made a wild decision that yielded a three. So there were probably eight points that, most times, if we played that play over, would not have gone down the way that it did. So, I actually felt okay about that, all things considered, going in down 12. And we came out and we stroked a three on the first possession. We got it down to four, I think, there. So, I don’t know that in my mind, and if anybody’s, certainly not in my mind, that the game got away from us quickly. I don’t think so, but in the second half it did. They went on a stretch, and then we weren’t doing a great job in our ball screen and ball screen coverage. We wanted to be aggressive with it. We have done that in some games with similar personnel that have certain strengths and weaknesses, or two big guys that are normally around the basket. They did a good job passing the ball, but still, again, some blown coverages in terms of how aggressive we wanted to be in those. And then that led to a lack of confidence in what we were doing that way, which made us try to change up a couple of things. And then you’re changing some things that you haven’t done quite as much, just to give it a different look, and those didn’t work, right, so we went back to our old set. But by then, you know, you get to a point where you do have to make some plays in order to get the game, you know, back within striking distance.”

You’ve got at least a couple of games left with him, but you have a real tight relationship with Meechie (Johnson). He said he wrote you a letter today. What did that mean to you? He didn’t into deep detail on it, but what does that mean to you, and what was today knowing that was the last one you made for him?

“He came into the office. This was maybe an hour before I was going to come over here to the arena and he dropped off a note and you know, I said, ‘Well, should I read it now? When should I read it?’ He said, ‘Whenever you want, coach.’ And so, I did not read the letter, because I had an idea of what it would potentially say and I didn’t want to be emotional going into the locker room before we come over and play a game. So, I will read that when I get back over to my office when I get back. But, you know, he’s a great kid, it’s probably easier. It definitely is easier for kids to express themselves that way this year, but honestly, it also says a lot that he did it in a ‘put pen to paper’, you know, versus a quick text or something like that. But he’s a very thoughtful and generous, extremely generous person with a really good heart. And so, it’s been fun to coach him and, you know, we got at least a couple of games, like you said, but hopefully we can extend that by playing well in Nashville.”

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You mentioned some of the ball screen coverages, they had a ton of lobs tonight, you know, 56 paint points. Like, for you guys specifically, is it more of an issue of maybe stopping the dribble penetration on the ball screen, or is it help side on the back end, that’s kind of been something that’s tripping you guys up?

“Yeah, well, I mean, I look at what the total. How the total got to that number, because they also ducked us in. They also got offensive rebounds, 18 second-chance points. My guess would be the majority of those. The vast majority of those were also in the paint. And I know they ducked us in, in fact, that’s why we ultimately kept talking about three seconds. We got one three-second call on them. But, so I’ll have to get to what the breakdown of that is. It’s a high number, clearly, but just in the ball screens, right off the top, I know. Again, at the point there were two points. For us, if a couple of passes get made after the ball screen, typically a ball screen is intended to score immediately, or within a pass. Typically if there are two passes made, there is only a certain level of frustration you can have with that. The more passes that get made, the less impact the actual ball screen had, which is kind of what you want out of a ball screen defense. But we were not impacting the ball immediately, consistently.

“So here’s what’s really hard when you have rim lob threats, and not all tall guys are lob threats. You also have to have a guard that can throw them. You also have to be a guy that can go get them. There are plenty of those in this league. When we have a legitimate lob threat, we typically want to impact the ball so it doesn’t get downhill. If it get’s downhill, it’s hard to do both, stop the ball and still get back to these guys. When the ball gets thrown up three feet above the rim, they’re not going to recover for that. So that was one area that I thought, certainly, we did not do a good job. And then another one was, once it came out into the short role, again, that was easier because we didn’t impact the ball the way that we wanted to, but once it came out into the short roll, we also did not affect that guy as consistently as we wanted to. Again, if you throw one pass to the short roll, another pass that doesn’t lead to the basket, then a third pass normally has to come in and make a score. And so that’s typically what we try to do, but we did not impact that second guy. And we have in some other games. We’ve had some other teams that were built similarly to these guys, in terms of two non-shooting bigs around the basket, and what that means to our guys from helping and recovering, and big-on-big help. And then also with lob threat, and in most of the games recently, teams that have legitimate lob threats, we haven’t gotten, given up a lot of lobs in that, but, you know, today we were not as impactful in those two areas. And that doesn’t mean you don’t get scored on, one those possessions, but it means you don’t typically give up a lot of lobs in those situations.”

It really feels like Meechie’s having his best year of his career. I mean, he’s averaging more points than before, it just feels like he’s really found his consistency down the stretch here. Just, what do you attribute to why he’s been the way he’s played this year?

“A big part of it, I think, was his maturity when he came back here. He was really mature. He had a host of health issues when he arrived to campus. So, as a matter of fact, he didn’t do most of the summer workouts with us. He had three different things going on at one time, any one of which would have put him out for a good amount of time. But luckily for us, they all were happening at the same time. So really, it was only as long as the longest one. But his whole perspective during that time, and the maturity that he displayed during that time was another whole level of, it was a different person than what I remembered even from when he left the last time. Just a different, a completely different level of maturity and perspective, and I think that really has impacted how he’s played.”

How have you seen him be an example for some of the younger players as he still shows up through those personal adversities and when things aren’t going his way?

“Yeah, it’s a tremendous story, honestly. Let’s forget about basketball and all the other things. It’s a tremendous story of perseverance and of being true to yourself because he wanted to be back here. There was a lot of outside noises, and, you know, ‘Oh, you’re going to do this and do that, and then do this again and then go back to this. And it’s like, so, to be, and he was scrutinized heavily for that. And so for him to be able to quiet that noise in a way that he could really dive into this team, and his coaches and just his whole experience in this last year being back here in Columbia, said a lot about who he was as a person. It’s a great story for, you know, young people. Perception is reality. And so, you know, obstacles that maybe back in the dark ages, when I was young, were not perceived as big as obstacles, are real obstacles for these guys. And so, handling and dealing with those sometimes can be difficult. They’re also, as I mentioned before, not tremendous communicators. They don’t communicate near as much in the way that we communicated. So, they’re scrutinized way more than I ever was, and so they got all these things happening it difficult in some of these situations. And so, I give Meechie a lot of credit. He’s been a tremendous example for the guys on our team. He’s an incredible communicator with his voice to his teammates; his energy is always good. So, and you know, you never know what anyone’s going through at any particular point in time. It’s just facts. We perceive that we know what a guy like him is going through because we see it publicly, when you really have no clue what’s happening beneath the surface. So I give him a lot of credit for how he’s handled and managed, and then still been able to play at the level that he was able to play and be a tremendous example for his teammates, also.

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You said at the start of the season that you really trust your staff’s ability to develop a player in just one year, which, with half your senior class, was the situation. But the other half either weren;t on the team last year, or weren’t healthy in Myles (Stute’s) case. How would you grade your staff’s job in developing your seniors in that one season this year?

“Yeah, um, I think if you look at some things, Meechie Johnson is having the best year of his career. And that’s saying a lot, because he had a really good year when he was here. We’re talking just from a personal standpoint in the development of your game. He’s playing the full-time point guard, which he was not playing before. He was number one in assist rate. I don’t know what it is at this point, but he was number one in assist rate as of two games ago, in the whole conference. He was in the top 15 in scoring in the conference, and he was in the top five in usage rate in the conference. And that’s as point guard, and having to distribute the ball, create plays for others, full-time point guard. So, there’s a ridiculous amount of growth that has happened. I think that would be undeniable for anyone that has eyes and can read a stat sheet.

“You look at a guy like Kobe Knox, right? And the argument clearly can be made that this is his best year of his entire career at the highest level that he’s played at. I’ve talked on and on about his development, the things that he’s added to his game, he’s attacking the rim better than ever. The only thing he hasn’t done is, he’s shot the ball better from three in his career than he did this year, but completely different player. I guess someone that saw him a year ago or so probably wouldn’t recognize some of the things that he’s doing, and he’s doing those things in the SEC as a defender. Tremendous growth as a defender, tremendous growth as a defender from when he first got here. You like Mike Sharavjamts as a guy that, in his career, the most free throws he shot in one game, or in one season ever, was 44, I think, was the number. He’s at 80-something right now. If that’s not development, I don’t know what development is. He’s attacking the basket more, he had his career high here, he could have had it multiple times. My mind was blown that 19 was his career high, I mean, after watching him play, so tremendous growth.

“I don’t want to leave any of those guys out, but there’s three examples right off the top that if you just want to glance at a stat sheet and then look at this guy, look at what he was doing a year before, is undeniable and tremendous growth out of those guys. So, you know, I do. I still value development. I think you have to have a good combination for some guys that are pretty much ready to go, but that doesn’t mean that they still can’t develop. You know, Collin Murray-Boyles, we had him for two years, but if you look at the growth of a guy like that, you look at GG Jackson, was a guy that, when he came out of high school, was a rim-running 5-man. And we played him on the perimeter, and the when he’s in the NBA, what does he do? He makes threes. And no one thought he could make threes. So I think that’s just a…part of what this is. It’s my favorite part of what this job is, is impacting those guys, and I think that’s the one that I think you can have the most impact on. So, overall, I’d say we did a good job. There’s some other guys that maybe they haven’t grown as much, or their growth wasn’t displayed in their stats, I’ll say it that way, right? Their growth was not evident by what their numbers looked like when they shot from three, or what they averaged as points. But those three that I mentioned before stand out clearly as guys that, even statistically, have made tremendous growth in a one-year situation.”

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