Everything Lamont Paris said after South Carolina's dominant win over Stetson

Following an 82-51 win over Stetson on Saturday, South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris spoke to the media about the game. Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening statement

“We’ve talked a lot about being growth-minded and being focused on improvement. There were some specific areas that I thought we did, that we spent a couple of days after the Virginia Tech game addressing a couple of things that I really thought that we needed to address. There was some growth. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but there was definitely some growth, particularly on the defensive side of the ball and in our ball screen coverage responsibilities. I’d say that probably was the number one thing that we were really focusing on, and I thought we did a much better job in this game with that, and made some shots too. So that is always good. But anytime you hold a college basketball team to those low numbers in terms of field goal percentages and only 51 points, you’re going to give yourself a great chance to have success.”

Both of your centers were in the starting lineup tonight. Is that something you’re playing around with, or maybe showing them a different look and playing something else?

“Yeah, I mean, I mentioned this once before. We’re still trying to figure it out. Consistency is the key to that. Consistency is the key to establishing, okay, this is my role. There are a couple of positions that we haven’t changed for the most part all season, and that’s an indication of how consistently those guys are performing relative to some other guys, and so just still trying to ultimately figure it out. I’ve said this before, if Christ (Essandoko) can become our most, he’s our biggest, most massive guy, the day that he can become our most consistent guy at that position, that’s probably our best version of our team, probably to start the game anyway, probably just on mass, and the commitment that you have to make to defend his overall mass. So that’s out there for him, but it’s also out there for a variety of guys. We threw EJ (Walker) in there today. And so obviously, if there was a log jam of guys that were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing on a consistent basis, we wouldn’t add one more guy to the mix. So he’s brought some things to the table over the course of time, and so we put him in there, too. But yeah, so we’re still just searching for where that real sweet spot is in terms of what those forwards look like.”

Become part of The Insiders Forum with GamecockCentral. Start for $1, and get a complimentary year of The Athletic included with your membership.

What has changed over the last few weeks, whether it’s in practice or just his preparation, to get EJ Walker into games now, thus burning his redshirt?

“A couple of things. One, he has a tremendous understanding of what we would like to do. I don’t know if it’s probably a combination of intelligence, combined with intent, very intent listening. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but that’s like in this day and age, there’s not as much of that happening. He’s really intentional about it. Even though he’s in a redshirt situation, and I asked questions, he always knows the answer to what I’m asking. I mean, when I say always, he always knows the answer, so he pays attention, even though he wasn’t going to be playing in the games. And so I think that stuff helps him. I think other things that he’s brought to the table are typically, if he gets two hands on the ball, he grabs it, and he’s as strong with the ball as anybody else that we have. He has a good feel for some of the ball screen things, and he’s still getting there. Doing them live versus doing a practice is a little bit different. But he’s done a lot of things over these last few weeks.

“I found myself a month ago probably saying, and this was a threat at the time, just we weren’t doing some things. And I told the other guys that were not redshirting. I said, and he had had a couple of good days, ‘I will take EJ’s redshirt off, and I will burn that thing.’ And then I found myself thinking it a couple more times, just based on what he was doing. It’s a hard decision because when a person’s on the scout team, you only notice them for the good things that they do. And so then, as you really start deciding if this is something that you’re going to do, and making a commitment to playing a guy in that scenario. I don’t want to play him 13 minutes a day and then nine games in a row with no minutes, and then four minutes and then 20 minutes. I don’t want to do it that way. I don’t think it makes much sense. But as you’re looking at making that decision, you have to then evaluate him with a different eye over a course of time, right? And then say, OK, well, I know this is the thing that we always ask guys to do. I have to see if he’s actually doing those things, and a lot of them, he is. That’s kind of where it came from. I had a conversation with his parents and with him, and so it just seemed like it made sense. And so here we are.”

You spoke at length after the Virginia Tech game about your guys’ decision-making. How would you evaluate your decision-making as a team tonight?

“Better. I mean, actually today, I think our decision-making was worse offensively, which hasn’t been an issue for us for the most part this year. The decision-making that was failing us was normal decisions in defensive situations. There are two worlds to live in, three really. There’s a world where there’s these rules, and you’re obedient to these rules. There’s a world where you forget all about the rules, and then you just have physical reactions, and you can block shots and do things to recover. And then there’s another world where, of all these normal things, a breakdown happens, a guy makes a really good play on the other side, whatever it might be. And then there’s a decision in front of you that’s a seemingly normal, pretty normal decision. We had done a poor job of making those decisions in those moments, pretty straightforward decisions, and I thought we were much better. I thought it was a couple of things. One, those decisions were better. Two, we were in less of those situations because we guarded the ball better. We chased over screens better. We were more obedient in our ball screen coverage and responsibilities. I thought all those things made their fewer of those decisions had to be made, and then when they were, I thought we did a better job.”

Elijah Strong has done really well lately, coming off the bench. Have you considered maybe bumping his minutes or even giving him some time in that first five out there?

“Substitution patterns and all, there’s a lot of things that go into starting. I’m sure every guy wants to start. Only five guys get to start. But he knows his role, and his role is important for us. His role is to be aggressive when he gets out there. I think he’s got some things that he’s working on, too, from a cardiovascular standpoint. So in some ways, minutes can naturally be a little more limited. I think he would probably say the same thing. He’s not ready to play 30 minutes. Not many guys are, by the way. I haven’t run into many guys that are capable of playing 30 minutes on a regular basis through 30-some games at a high level. Some guys are forced to do it, but you may take some possessions off too.

“But he’s a good player for us. We want him to be aggressive. He is aggressive by nature. Offensively, he’s got some things to shore up defensively. He’s making incremental improvements. We need him to make we need him to continue on that path. But I don’t have some predetermined, a lot of it’s based on who’s doing well, who else is in the game. That’s the other thing: who you can guard. That’s the biggest thing for us is when it comes time to go in the game, the first question is, OK, who is out there that you can guard? And if the answer is not someone, then you don’t go out there at that time. So sometimes you make a substitution, and then it’s like, OK, maybe I put Elijah out there. OK, well, I need this one guy out there, sure. So with this lineup, who would he guard in this lineup if I sub him in? It was like, well, nobody in this lineup, so we have to wait or move that other guy out there, right? So a lot of times it’s not as simple as they go out there and get a couple of buckets. There’s a little more method to the madness.”

Just for clarity, was it more of you wanting to burn Walker’s redshirt or Walker feeling like he could help the team on the court?

“Well, I said it out loud a couple of times. I mean, like I said, I said it in just maybe the first time, and then I said it again. And then I started saying it to my assistant coaches. And then I told one of my assistant coaches, and apparently, (Walker) had said something to his parents also. His dad’s a high school basketball coach, so I told one of my assistant coaches, I said, ‘Call his dad. Just call and tell him what I’m seeing and what I keep saying on a regular basis.’ And then, you know, as I said that a few times, a couple of weeks go by, and then it’s no longer just calling to tell him that, it’s like, let’s see if this is something that everyone would be interested in doing, and they were. He’s a pretty mature kid. He said that he trusted my plan for him. I tried to assure him that my plan would not be to do what I said, to play him and then you forget about him for the next 12 games, and then you come back in the 13th game and play a couple of minutes. Now, you have to perform, you have to play, you have to earn what you get. But I’m going to try to make an opportunity present itself for him most every game, and then at some point, he’ll be playing well, or he won’t be playing well. If he’s playing well, he’ll play more. If he’s not playing well, he’ll play a little bit less at some point. So that’s kind of how that went.”

Percentage-wise, your team’s highest day from three-point range for the season. How good was it to see a few shots go in, and what does that do for the team’s confidence?

“Hopefully, it does a lot for the team’s confidence. I went in there, and I got a couple shots up before the game today. I’d like to make sure the rims and the ball work together, and they did today. I mean, so I know it. So I went into the game, into the pregame, talking about how guys, you got to be loose. I mean, you’ve got to believe in yourself. You have to believe in your ability to make shots. Don’t shoot it because I told you to shoot the shot, or you feel like you are supposed to shoot the shot. Shoot the shot because you’re probably gonna make the shot. Shoot the shot and believe you’re gonna make the shot because you’ve made the shot so many times.

“So hopefully, this will be a good reminder to them of what we can do. And it’s not some sort of record that we ever broke, but I thought the quality of shots were good. I think our quality of shots have been pretty good overall for the season. But one thing that we were doing with what we were doing offensively today, you are a little more prepared. You do expect that the shot may come a little bit more, and what we were doing today, and then some of the other stuff, but still high-quality shots. So hopefully this will be something good for the guys. We’ve got finals week, like I said, so we’ll go a little bit lighter during the week. We played well, so we’ll be able to really try to dive into feeling good and playing well again at practice, instead of going over all these things that we didn’t do well. So get a good feel for ourselves as we knock finals out and get into The Citadel game.”

The Insiders Forum: Discuss South Carolina basketball!