One-on-one with South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris (part 4): Bo Ryan and expectations

A fifty-foot heave, hoisted from the hands of David Jean-Baptiste, went in as the final buzzer expired. The shot from beyond half-court gave UT-Chattanooga the win and sole possession of the Southern Conference title. This shot sent the Mocs to the NCAA Tournament, giving head coach Lamont Paris his first tournament birth as a head coach.

However, the NCAA tournament is nothing new for Paris; in fact, it is an expectation. In 17 years as a D-I coach, this was his team’s ninth NCAA Tournament appearance. In six of the nine appearances, Paris’ teams have advanced twice, making it, at least, to the Sweet 16, with two Final Fours under his belt.

Read One-on-one with South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris (part 1)

Under Keith Dambrot, LeBron James’ high school coach, at Akron and then Bo Ryan at Wisconsin, Paris cut his teeth in cultures of winning. He was able to take what made sense from each of them and then mold that into his own delivery.

In March, Lamont Paris became the new head coach at the University of South Carolina. He took over a program that finished tied for fifth in the SEC last season and for a coach, Frank Martin, that was the school’s third all-time winningest coach with 171 wins over his ten-year period.

Read One-on-one with South Carolina head coach lamont Paris (part 2): Recruiting

Last week, I traveled down I-95 to Columbia, South Carolina, and sat with Paris in his office for close to an hour. We talked through his first few months on the job, his philosophies and visions as a coach, expectations, and, of course, we talked about GG Jackson.

With the length of our conversation, I broke it up into multiple parts. Here is part one of my exclusive one-on-one with South Carolina head men’s basketball coach Lamont Paris.

Read One-on-one with South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris (part 3): GG Jackson

Give your thoughts on South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris on the Gamecock Central message board.

As the head coach, you want your voice and your ideals to go throughout your team. What do you think the identity is or what do you want the identity to be of this team?

Competitive. That’s it. You have to be competitive. I want us to be competitive. I want people to feel like, ‘Geez, we have to go in there to Columbia and play those guys. This is not gonna be fun.’

That stems from the defensive side, for the most part. We live in a world where we talk about some teams and they want to get a shot off in seven seconds. I can’t stop you from shooting it in seven seconds if you’re really hellbound to shoot the ball in seven seconds. But what I can do is in seven seconds, I don’t think you’re gonna get a great shot, and I can commit to that. So if you are willing to still shoot it in seven seconds, then that’s an advantage to us.

I want to make a team work; I want them to have to do a couple of different things; go to their plan B or plan C on this possession. Young players today they’re just not willing to do that on a consistent basis; at least, I haven’t found that to be the case.

So I think competitive, I think is a characteristic of our team that I’d like to be identified as; tough-nosed, competitive guys.

So you came from the Bo Ryan School of Basketball. You also coached with LeBron’s high school coach, Keith Dambrot. How have you kind of morphed what they bring to formulate your own voice and your own style?

Those guys are drastically different in a lot of different ways, you know. I’m enamored by winning and in a championship mentality, no matter what sport that’s in, even in business honestly, but no matter what sport that’s in. So there were some qualities from each of those guys and honestly from everyone that I’ve worked with that have, that have shown themselves and risen to the top for me.

The main reason why success has followed these guys, right? The main reason looks a little different, right? When I was at Wisconsin you play a little more like a pipeline defense. When I was at Akron, we did some different things that were much more aggressive. So it can look a lot of different ways.

But at their core, there are a lot more similarities between those two guys, Bo Ryan and Keith Dambrot, than one might think. So just take the best out of all those things and then deliver the message in your normal, natural way. I think you have to be you.

As a coach when it comes time to deliver your message. I think if you’re trying to be somebody else, because he’s a hall of famer; I can’t be Bo Ryan and I don’t want to be Bo Ryan. My players don’t want me to be Bo Ryan. So you take his values and the philosophies and the things that you want and you disseminate the information the way that you do it, in your voice, in your style.

I think that’s the best way to go about it.

And how would you describe your style of play?

I want to be aggressive offensively. I want to get a good shot, but I wanna be aggressive. I’d like guys, when they get to ball, I want them to be prepared to shoot, I want them to shoot.

That’ll simplify it right there. Let’s stop wining and dining with 20 dribbles. Let’s catch the thing, nd if we’re ready to shoot, we’re going to. If not, we’ll get it moved until it, the ball finds us again, and then I am ready to shoot, or I’m open to shoot. So that’s how I want to play offense.

We got some plays and everything, but I want to, once we rebound it, I want to come down and get the first available good shot that we can get, and I don’t want to pass it up. People talk about passing up a good shot for a great shot. I say sure, but if you know that the next one’s gonna be great. But you can’t see that that next shot is going to be great. But if you have a good shot, I think you should take a good shot, if it’s a good shot for you. So I do want to do that.

That’s us offensively. I like to be skilled. I like to shoot the three. We made 17 threes on three different occasions in my time at Chattanooga. That’s a lot of threes. So I value the three, I like us to shoot the three and I like guys that can do that, but I also like getting to the free throw line a lot too.

And then defensively, my style is going to be very regimented defensively. We will be somewhat predictable when a screen happens, there’s only a couple ways that we’re going do it. We’re going know the ins and outs of that and why it broke down and how to change that. And, you know, then it’s up to me to decide if this one works or that one works better based on their personnel or how they’re playing right now.

I want you to feel like you’re in a tug of war to get a shot off, that you like, against us that you like. I want you to have to feel like you need to change what you’re willing to accept as a good shot in a game against us.

And then my last question, what are your expectations for this team this year?

My expectation for the team is that, and this has usually been my expectation, the team that you see on November 8th will be drastically different than the team that you see on January 20th or on March 5th.

Drastically different teams, for the positive in a much better way by the time, the season ends. I think that’s always the goal for me in terms of my expectation. I’ve been around maybe one or two teams where it wasn’t that expectation. A couple teams where my expectation from day one was to be the best, and that has happened before. And even those teams would improve marginally. But, if I have 8 percent body fat, it’s hard to cut 50 percent off your body fat. If I’m at 33 percent body fat, it’s a little easier to do that.

Some of those really advanced teams out the gates, it’s harder for them to improve, they got to do more to get less back. But the average team, the general team, it’s about how much you continue to get better as the season goes, because as we all know, we’d rather be the team that’s playing its best at the end of the season that be the team that peaked in November and then went the wrong direction.

So, just to get better incrementally, and have a growth mindset.

And my evaluation of this team will be how do we improve? How do we improve on mistakes that we’re making? The question is literally in January, are those mistakes the same? Are you in the, are you in the same situation in a ball screen and you’re still making the same mistake that you made in November? That would be a failure. I don’t think that indicates that we’re having successes.

So even if you sneak out a winner because a guy banks in a half court shot that you shouldn’t have. My goal is not to evaluate that as much, but what are we doing and how are we growing? Because I know that if we are making the right decisions on a consistent basis, we’re growing and learning on a consistent basis.

The same situations that you had in November are going to present themselves in February, and you’re just going to have more successes. And the more successes that you have time after time, that’s what breeds long term, consistent winning. And that’s why some of the teams that I’ve been with, they’ve consistently won.

You will you lose a Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker in the same year. Well, how in the world do you go to the Sweet 16 the next year? While starting two guys that that did not start the year before, who didn’t even hardly play the year before. How does that happen? Because you have developed that kind of mindset and culture.