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

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.

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.

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 1)

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So when you first got this job, you had to build a roster. What was your mindset going into that recruiting process?

Yeah, I mean, my blueprint is what it is. I’m committed and beholden to the process and what it looks like, and what these pieces have to be. And so you have a decision early on in this thing. It’s like, I can potentially make a concession on this concept that’s important to me in an attempt to win one or two more games in my first year or I may compromise something else now that’s going to maybe not show itself until later on down the road in order to get those couple more wins.

That’s not how I do it. I think the things that are most important, you gotta establish those early. You might take some bumps early on in the process in order to establish how you’re going to lay this thing out.

So, what’s going to be important in who we’re gonna be as a team? Our DNA. It’s not shooting and not shooting, that’s not your DNA, right? Some years are going to have better shooters. Some years are not gonna have better shooters, but the things that are your DNA…how you compete, how you go about your business, how disciplined you are, how you share the ball as a team, how you interact with your teammates, those things are a team’s DNA.

I think you have to establish those things early, and you can’t sacrifice those things because there’s a better player, but he maybe doesn’t line up with those things.

So now that the two month sprint to try to put a team together is done, now that you have more time to both evaluate and understand the league and what you need, how will your recruiting philosophy morph or change moving forward?

I think you have a better chance of identifying the guys in terms of their substance that are matched to what you want your DNA to be. I think you can do more work. You have more time to do more work. I think you can sell your story better in order to get higher quality talent that also aligns in those ways because you have more time to do it. You can tell your story better with a little more time. So, I think that you can commit to it because you have more time. Versus seeing who can we get that’s available right now that also wants to come here, who fits what you want to be about a hundred percent. That’s a difficult thing when you first get there. You know your fan base is going to want to ask, ‘who’s this guy bringing in as recruits?’

You have to sign some guys, you can’t just take no one; you gotta take some guys. And so it’s a difficult thing to do that and be committed to what you want to get done early on in the process.

So let’s say Lamont Paris gets to walk into Target and hand-select his team from top to bottom. What are some traits, skill sets, or common denominators that you’re going to seek out to put on a team?

So I’ll look for two categories. One, I’ll go basketball stuff, and then I’ll go intangibles.

So from a basketball standpoint, I like skill. I know that word is subjective. I think we all think it means he dribbles and shoots really well. It can be that, but it can be a back-to-basket guy as a skilled guy, you know, he’s good at that. Defensive footwork is a skill. Rebounding is a skill. So I like skill.

But I generally also like guys that can shoot or have the ability to develop as a shooter. That’s a very important thing to me. I think when this game was invented, the thought was, how can I get this thing to go into that peach basket, right? How good am I at doing that? And there was probably a lot of value to guys that could make that happen early on in that process. So, I value the ability to do that as an offensive trait.

Passing is an important part of it, right? I have this idea that I’m gonna send this ball off by way of the pass to a teammate. And then you wanna make sure it gets received from the sender. Those are two things that are very important to me from a basketball standpoint.

And then the non-basketball things, the intangibles. Competitive spirit that’s number one. I think you have to have a good competitive spirit. I think you have to have a good feel, I put a high coefficient on that factor. Those would be two things. Toughness is another thing, too.

Then somewhere, if you can do those things and then you can run fast and jump high, I value that too. But it’s a little lower for me. In my experiences, I’ve seen fewer guys be able to impact the game consistently through a 32-game season with running and jumping than I have from passing and shooting. Defending those guys can affect the game. There are some guys that are going to be rendered essentially useless in some games based on what another team does if it only comes down to running and jumping.

No matter who you play, no matter if it’s a zone team or a man team, a pressing team or a soft team, those skill guys can affect the game.

**This was part one of a multi-part series with new South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris. Stay tuned in the coming days to www.on3.com as the interview continues.