Everything Lamont Paris said after South Carolina Black Friday win over Charleston Southern

South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris spoke to local media following the Gamecocks’ win over Charleston Southern.

Here is everything he said.

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Opening Statement

“Okay, well, it’s good to get back on the right side of things. And you know, I thought we did some good things in the game. We didn’t turn the ball over. These games in the non-conference in the early part of the season, you’re trying to get your team to grow and be better. And so there are all these small things that add up to that happening. You know, Elijah [Strong] was really good today. We are going to need that in multiple games. So it’s nice to see that, you know, we didn’t turn the ball over.”

“There were plenty of good things. They have a little bit of a unique style of playing on the defensive side. So it took us a little getting used to. I was disappointed a couple of times in the first half, just with our individual one-on-one defensive abilities versus some of the guys. But, you know, the second half, I thought we got the ball inside a little bit more and created some situations for ourselves.”

“And you know, this was probably, I told our guys that I was probably as uncomfortable going into this game as I have been in a while, just I don’t think we had a great practice yesterday. It was Thanksgiving Day, but I don’t think we had a great practice by any stretch of the imagination yesterday. So they were, I was coming into it a little unsettled, and sure enough, in the first half, we didn’t play great. And so I was just glad for us to be able to get a couple of things turned around in the second half and find a way to come to a win.”

Lamont, you mentioned not having a great price yesterday. How much do you feel like the slow start also kind of attributed to Thanksgiving and then also the little bit of the layoffs since Greenbrier?

“Yeah, I mean, I think those two things were probably not coincidental. Is that it was, we had a poor practice, and it was, happened to be Thanksgiving, and people’s families were coming into town. And, you know, like you said, we hadn’t played in a little bit, and people were looking forward to, maybe it’s their favorite, it’s my favorite meal of the year. Somebody else probably was looking forward to it much as I was.”

“But, you know, we still had a job to do. It’s hard, it’s hard to practice on Thanksgiving and say, you’re going to be focused and locked in. You know, the guys may think they’re looking down at the schedule, and they see Charleston Southern, and maybe they’re not familiar with them. And so anyway, that all probably played into it, but, you know, it’s hard, but you have to be mature and go about your business and think about the big picture versus the next hour. And you know, that’s an area we still have to get better.”

Saw Christ Essandoko leave early, came back out with his hand taped, is there an update on him?

“Well, it was taped the whole time. I think he’s got like a soft cast on it, or something like that. So he’s just, as long as he can play. And if it gets dinged during the game, it’ll, I think he had sharp pain at the time that happened, and then, so probably needs a little break.”

“And then once that gets all settled down again, you know, we can, we can try him again. But, you know, there was just some other stuff too, in terms of the matchups and who was playing well and whatever that looked like, but I haven’t heard anything about him, so status quo is probably the same, as far as I know right now with Christ.”

I know you mentioned Thanksgiving in practice and some outside factors, but Elijah was just in here saying that you guys want to prevent slow starts from becoming a habit. As coaches, is there any way to prevent that habit from forming?

“Sometimes, it’s the lineup that’s in there sometimes. But we’ve had a lot of different lineups as far as starting lineups go, and we had a lot of guys that were not available in this game. But they gotta be ready to play, honestly. You have to be ready to play like today, in particular. I use this analogy with our guys, like, if it’s gray and cloudy outside, there’s no guarantee it’s going to rain, but if it rains, you wouldn’t be surprised. And so when you practice poorly or exceptionally well, there’s no guaranteed carryover to the game that correlates to that. But I wasn’t going to be surprised that we got off to a slow start when we didn’t practice well 24 hours ago.”

“So that’s just having done this a couple of times. That’s kind of what my mindset was. But so yeah, so I mean, I think in this particular game, in my mind, anyway, there’s probably some carryover to the fact that we didn’t play well at practice day before, but I don’t know. Just gotta be ready to play. Basketball is a game of runs, slow starts, fast starts, whatever. You always get off to a fast start. I think I would recommend that to any team, if possible. But basketball, so it’s why they keep a stat on the stat sheet that says lead changes, because there’s generally a bunch of them. So you know, just want to have more ups than downs, like the stock market.”

Nordin Kapic got in there for a few more minutes than he has lately. What did you see in him? Did you see more from him over this week of practice? Or was it just more of a function of, you know, not having Myles Stute and Hayden Assemian?

“Some of that, there just was more opportunity because of that, but also just the way that these guys played, they don’t guard your five-man on the perimeter with their five-man. I didn’t have enough confidence to really do this, but, you know, part of me wanted to say, let’s just open the floor up and stand Nordin at the top and let him shoot 20 threes and see how many he makes.”

“I mean, I’m sure at some point, if he was really hot, they’d have to change what they were doing. But we weren’t really hot. Jordan Butler got some. In fact, that’s where they started the game. They had their four man on Nordin, and they had their five on Jordan. That’s why they got some of those wide open shots early, you know, and we didn’t make them.”

“But I thought that that would be, this would be a game that was that went in Nordin’s favor, and in two different ways. One, I thought he could get some clean looks from three, and two, their post is not an integral part of scoring the ball. I should say, is good in terms of creating and passing and screening and generating offense, but not in terms of scoring. So I thought both of those things worked in Nordin’s favor, and that it could get some good looks, and hopefully he would get off to a good start. As far as shooting the ball.”

Kobe Knox got off to a good start, started 6-6, and had 15 points. What did you see from him today?

“He was cutting. You know, he did. He had some really good cuts that that put him in good position to score some stuff. I know he made at least one three. I can’t remember. I don’t know how many didn’t made without looking, but yeah, he played. He played well.

“Sometimes you just play well, yeah, I looked down. I watched the Wisconsin game last night. A guy had 36 points on 25 shots and was pretty efficient, and only had four free throws in there. So sometimes you play well, sometimes you struggle a little bit more. And he played well, he played well, but he was being really active. You know, he ran the floor, got two in transition, I think at least running the floor, one cross, right underneath the bucket, and we threw a really nice pass to him for a layup. He got the dunk. It was a highlight play. Got another dunk in transition, maybe off of the steal that he got, I think.

“So he just was really active. And it was most of them were, were unpredictable offense, you know, and there’s really a place for that, especially if your offense gets bogged down or struggling a little bit, unpredictable offense that comes generally from effort-type plays or finding yourself in the right place at the right time. You know, some guys have a knack for that. He’s been, he’s been a good guy in terms of just having a nose for where the ball is or where he should be, in terms of cutting.”

I don’t think Elijah checked in until the five minute mark. Left in the first half. I saw him on the stationary bike a little bit. Was everything all good with him?

Yeah, his knee was bothering him just a little bit. I think he’s had throughout his career, a little tendonitis, which flares up from time to time and over the last day or so, there was one play in in in the Northwestern game where he slipped on the ground and and hit that knee on the ground that may have aggravated it, But so he was a little lighter at practice yesterday and the last couple days.”

“But so, you know, if we had gotten off to a great start and played extremely well, may not have played him, but was able to go and I thought we needed [him]. He can, he can help. You know, he can generate offense. Let’s not kid ourselves. He can generate offense in a lot of ways as a scorer, but he’s extremely intelligent. He has an extremely high basketball IQ, especially on the offensive end. And so, regardless of what you’re doing, he seems to find a place to get to that makes sense and allows you to run some offense. So I thought we needed that, and so I stuck him in there in the first half, he did some really good stuff, even though he missed, he wasn’t as he wasn’t as efficient as a scorer early in the game.”

“And then it all started. We stuck with him because he was generating good situations. And then he started hitting shots, and they started feeling good about himself. And that’s what happens when good players feel good: they start making hard shots, and then a little turn around in front of our bench. And he’s going to have a lot of days like that. I honestly believe that I’ve said that about him from the day the guy, he’s an extremely talented and versatile offensive weapon, and so, you know, getting him to expect those days to happen more often is part of the growth and maturity process for a guy like that. So hopefully this was a good shot in the arm for him that way and a dose of confidence, and we can move forward with with with him being a regular part of what we could get done offensively.”

I know Greenbrier was a little bit unique from a court gym setup, but this is four or five straight games where y’all haven’t shot very well from behind the three-point line. Does that concern you at this point?

“I’m going to shoot, we’re going to shoot threes. I mean, we’re going to shoot threes. Got to make them. We’re going to get them. We don’t force them, you know, just the way we’re built, we’re going to shoot threes. We need to make a good percentage.”

“The rims and green at the Greenbrier were tight, though. I know that, because I’m telling you, I shot a bunch of shots. But clearly it looks like that had nothing to do with it, after going whatever it was 5-25 that we did today, so. But again, this was a little bit unique as well. You got guys shooting wide-open shots, and then you miss them.”

“We played it was the Citadel when I was at Chattanooga, and one of the best shooters I’ve coached, David Jean-Baptiste, great guy, also, by the way, in case he ever listens to this, but they didn’t guard him, and he missed one or two, and then he’s dribbling around, not even looking at shooting, and he’s wide open. This is David Jean-Baptiste, by the way, like a tremendous shooter, it messes with you. It can mess with you.”

“And so, you know, that’s part of it. You also look at who was, who was our, who was shooting, probably not. Our highest percentage guys in some of it, Jordan Butler, but, yeah, no, we’re going to play the way we play. We’re going to continue to generate offense by way of the three. We also need to get better at going to the basket and getting the ball thrown into the post. So I thought it was really good for Elijah to have a good game that way. He attacked the rim, got in a couple and ones like, we need that component of our game. I just have always believed in that you have to have somebody that you can throw the ball to, settles you down, makes the defense make a decision on what they want to do, and then that can generate more threes. It’s all an attempt to get high-quality threes up. You have shooters that you believe in, and then you continue to do that at some point in any particular game. Sure, you have to look for other sources of offense, but that’s going to be a good source for us throughout the season.”

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