Everything Lamont Paris said following South Carolina win over Presbyterian

South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris spoke to the media following the Gamecocks’ 20-point win over Presbyterian.

Here’s everything he said.

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Opening Statement

“I’ll just start with, I thought it was mission accomplished on one thing that we had really emphasized in this game was to try to do a better job guarding the ball, and just see what that looked like. You know, normally you go into the pregame speech and you do a couple of magic tricks and juggle a couple of things and tell a funny joke, and then you have all this stuff that’s going to be the magical formula to beating that team.”

“And today, I just really didn’t have much on the board at all. It was blank other than a couple other but it was pretty much blank. And so we were focused on trying to establish whether or not we could stay in front of the ball consistently. So I thought to that end, we did a we did a pretty good job, especially for two thirds of the game.”

“But some really good things came out of the game. Some of our young guys got out there, got a little more opportunity, performed. So, you know, we’re trying to develop this whole picture. And so that’s one little part of it was today, and so I was happy with with those things. The game got loose at the end, you know, but I didn’t want to be all crotchety and have a bad taste in my mouth, because over the last two and a half minutes, you know, some guys want to go out there and get a bucket. I wanted to get a bucket at that point, but we’ll mature and hopefully handle those situations a little bit better. I think we gave up 14 points in the last three and a half minutes, or something like that. But overall, I’m not going to let that taint the fact that I thought the guys did a good job.”

Was it a conscious effort coming in to attack the basketball instead of relying so much on the three pointer? Did that change during the game?

“Well, I mean, I made a statement. And so here’s what I want the guys to do honestly. I want them to play the game. I want them to let the game and the other team’s defense dictate what our shot selection looks like. I think it’s known that I like threes. I just, I do. I think in our last game they dictated that you weren’t going to get the ball around the basket a lot. And so, you know, we shoot a decent number of threes normally. I think it was exaggerated by that team Today, I think early in the game, I look at our first six threes, we were maybe over our first six or seven threes, but the quality of them was great.”

“Now, on the other hand, of it, there were two or three of them that also we could have gotten all the way to the basket. So I did. I did say that. Okay, now that we’ve missed some, let’s continue to shoot the wide open ones, but the other ones that then have the Plan B is a wide open alley to the rim. Let’s try to take advantage of some of those two. See if we can get them to follow us, get to the free throw line, get ourselves going, and then we’ll open it up a little bit. But yeah, after after that, I think our percentage was was decent. We still ended up, I think, 8-25 so we were just under the the one point per possession threshold, which we shot just well enough from three to make it make sense.”

“So we were right at that number tonight. But yeah, I did once we missed a couple just encourage a couple guys, if they had an alley, to go to the basket, let’s get to the basket. Put some pressure on the rim and when we did that, we created some open ones. There was one late in the game, I think it was Myles (Stute), maybe, drove in front of our bench on the other side and pump fake a couple times, and he wheeled around and threw it to a wide open guy from from the corner and splashed it in. So I think just the concept of trying to get to the rim and then generate some offense that way was definitely something that we talked about.”

Lamont, what went into giving Hayden Assemian the start tonight, and just what are you liking about the progress that the freshmen are making to play more minutes, but also making an impact when they’re out there?

“Yeah, good question. You know, Nordin (Kapic), I shouldn’t have played. I wasn’t going to play him at all, but then we had built a lead. So I said, ‘Let me see what it looks like, and just get him out there a little bit,’ and he just wasn’t himself. And so, you know, hindsight is 20/20. Had he stroked three threes, I would have felt like a genius, but which is hard for me to do. But so the next guy in line really had been Hayden. I think Hayden’s been one of our most consistent guys. That’s funny to say about a freshman who had the highest plus minus in the last game and didn’t shoot one shot.

“But I think he’s been the most predictable, one of our most predictable players in terms of what I get I have, the less, the fewest amount of surprises based on what he does, and so I went with him. And, you know, true to form, we go out there and he gets, I mean, I don’t know how many on the one possession, I felt like there was, he had a couple of them. Clonings not for humans, hasn’t really gone into effect. But it looked like there were three of them out there with every rebound, he either grabbed it or he was involved in it. So he has elite effort. It’s elite effort that you couldn’t do if you were trying to concentrate on making yourself play that hard all the time. You’re either that person already, or you’re not, and it’s no discredit to not have his level of effort because it’s elite, but he’s plays really hard.”

“All the freshmen. I mean, I love our freshman class. I said that. I’ve said that already before, so I’m glad that they played well, but you know, Grant Polk is really able, obviously he can shoot the ball. I think we know that. And Eli (Ellis) was really generating a lot of offense at one point, either for himself or his teammates. So that was really good, but a really good class, and I’m excited about those guys and their ability to impact us.”

Guys got to the free throw line a lot tonight too. Is that maybe something, it’s a byproduct of, maybe teams because they know you’re going to want to shoot a lot of threes and maybe closing out aggressively?

I think, yeah, we spent a lot of time trying to work on, and we still have a lot of work to do in it, working on attacking closeouts. You know, you look at these guys in the NBA, they get really good at attacking closeouts because the space is based on the rules and the depth of the three point line and skill. The space is so wild in the NBA game that you have to be able to attack the closeout off the dribble and all the good guards can.”

“So we’ve really been trying to work on that some. And yeah, I think that’s a byproduct of us getting to the free throw line. Is a byproduct of teams, you know, at some point, hopefully, saying, ‘Okay, here’s what we’re not going to do. They’ve shown that they can make threes. They’ve shown that they’re willing to make a lot of threes. Let’s not go down with them doing the thing that we already knew, that they do pretty well. So let’s take those away and then, you know, hopefully that’ll create some alleys for us to attack the rim and get in there.'”

“And, you know, maybe pump fake a little bit more. That would be ideal for me. But when we did, I’ll tell you, I’m still, I’m going to go back and see if we pump fake, and it failed us, and we were stuck because we pump fake. I know the percentages were high that when we pump fake, we got something good, but, yeah, we’ve been working hard on trying to get the ball to rim and get free throws. It never fails over the season. It’s the highest points per possession come from the free throw line. So we need to get there as much as we can.”

It seemed like early, a lot of Presbyterian’s off-ball screens did a pretty good job of getting you guys out of position on defense. How would you assess your interior defense tonight?

“Pretty good overall. I mean, we had a couple miscommunications. They run an action. It’s called floppy, and they’re good at it. I mean, Tony Bennett won a national championship doing some sort of version of something like that with some really good players. So, it’s obviously an effective offense, and they do a really good job with it.”

“And we had decided we’re going to guard it a certain way, and there were a few times that we did that effectively, and then there were a couple other times that that we did not do what we were supposed to do. And I know Elijah Strong one time it looked like he didn’t make a good play, when in reality, he did. Our backside help was supposed to be there, and so he was kind of stranded on an island with that one, and we addressed that, but they do a good job. They’re so well coached. I told him before the game, I have a lot of respect for their team and what their approach is, how they go about their business, how they’re coached. They went to Georgia State, and one, they got two good road wins early in the season. Those are hard to come by. I mean, they’re really well coached. So I thought we did a pretty good job on that, because that floppy action, particularly when you got a guy like (Carl) Parrish that’s coming off and like he can make hard shots he did a couple of times, but that guy could get going in no time. So I thought we did a decent job of making those shots, you know, a little bit more difficult overall.”

When comparing to Sunday, obviously more success driving to the basket. You get to the free throw line. Have some success there. The pump fakes were working for you. Early in the season, what does it do for Team confidence to see kind of the fruits of that labor in practice right away?

“Yeah, I think it’s extremely important. I think as as as just as people, I think positive reinforcement is all and belief in those results is always what continues to drive you in your day to day grind. Imagine working really hard for something that you didn’t think would ultimately work out, it just wouldn’t inspire you to work as hard, I don’t think. I think it’s key that we get into those moments, and we’ll have a lot of film today of some successful situations that we were in.”

“You know, we weren’t able to attack in the last game as much. They just the way that they played. I looked again, and there were the number of times that they had five defenders all in the paint, with two feet in the paint, not a piece of the paint. Was one. The amount of times that they had all five defenders in the paint was a crazy number of times. So you’re gonna have to shoot some threes, and it was gonna be harder to attack. That was just their strategy. Everybody’s got a different strategy, but this game allowed us more opportunity to attack, get in the paint and play off of two feet.”

“We talked about that a lot, pump fake guys. I think discipline of defenders has gone down over the years. And so if you get in there and a real hard attack and you show the ball, guys are going to go for it. People have been talking about it since the game’s inception, probably, but I know I’m a believer in it. Hopefully our players are becoming, you know, a little more well versed in the in the fruits of pump faking. And it can be a real weapon. It’s a real weapon. I just, I think it’s one of the most powerful weapons on offense. I think a close second would be pivoting.”

20 point win. Can’t turn your nose up at that. Margin of victory is not a thing in NCAA Tournament selection, but efficiency numbers are. Do you pay any attention to those kind of things at this point in the season? Or do those things matter at this point to you?

“Not a whole lot to me. I mean, not a whole lot to me. I We have some things that we’re trying to get accomplished. We got a lot of those things accomplished. I tell you, I’ve seen too many times where guys have, whoever it is is their best player or their leading scorer, and you’re up 26 points, and the guys in there (are just) shooting shots with two and a half minutes left and like and something bad happened. And so if something bad happens from an injury standpoint, you’re never going to feel good about it. But if it happens when I left our leading scorer in there with a 26 point lead with three minutes left, I, for one, am going to be one person that’s not going to sleep well that night.”

“So I just do my normal stuff. I thought the minutes for some of those young guys to develop, and I thought that was important, but certainly I thought I addressed it at the end. You can’t go in the game, and you have to earn the right to go in the game. You don’t just go in the game and you’re able to do whatever you want because you’ve got a margin out there, cushion that you can do whatever you want. So we addressed that. And so hopefully now, as we move forward, if and when we’re in that situation again, we’ll handle it better. We’ll be a little more mature. We’ll learn another thing that you learn from a game like this. But I try not to put as much stock in it right now. I know at some point, if you are right there on the bubble and they’ve got this equation that you know, efficiency, and I still think probably margin of victory to some degree, is a component.”

Is there an update on Christ Essandoko and was Nordin Kapic a little banged up tonight?

“Yeah, yeah. Christ, I’m not sure, it’s not a long term injury. It’s really just about how he’s feeling, I think. And, you know, kind of day to day, really, with that.”

“And then, yeah, Nordin’s the same. He’s got a deep thigh bruise. Got like, some football pad on it. But I thought he, you know, I got the word that he was available for the game, and so I wasn’t going to play him. I planned on not playing him. But again, then we had built a little cushion, and I said, ‘Let me just see, you know, maybe work him in there, get a little sweat going,’ and he wasn’t himself. So I pulled him back out of it, and that was that was it for him. But again, another one that shouldn’t be a long term situation. Get some therapy tomorrow and and with this little break we have here, he should be good to go by the time we play again.”

Jordan Butler said you had challenged him to be a bigger presence on the interior this past offseason. From when he got back in the summer to now, how have you seen him progress?

“He’s had pretty consistent progress. Now today, I think, was one of his most active days I’ve ever seen him in practice or a game, just his overall activity, but he has been consistently improving from the time that he got here. He’s made a commitment to it. He changed some of his eating habits. He’s gotten in better conditioning and better condition. We challenged him. We ran a mile right before this season started, and so I challenged him to that he blew it out of the water honestly, and he’s made a real commitment, to give him all the credit. He’s made a real commitment.”

“But he’s also, I think, been an acknowledgement of the fact that when we say, ‘Hey, you got to get your motor up.’ Whatever that even means, I don’t whatever that means that he has tried to do, what he thinks that means is being more active. And today, he was really active. The question the challenge would be, I pulled him over during the game. At one point, he had moved his feet incredibly well. He’s very agile, incredibly agile. And so I said, I said, ‘Okay, now you’ve shown us that you can do that, right? So stop being stingy and give that to us all the time, and we expect that from you all the time.'”

“And so just coming to grips with that and being able to produce that on a regular basis, that’s that’s a challenge for a young person. So hopefully this will be something that really reinforces how good you can be as a player when you’re active. So hopefully moving forward, he’ll be continuing to be an active player.”

Meechie Johnson had nine shots, Eli had seven. Was that by design?

“No, I mean, sorry, here’s the news flash. I don’t really, I tell the guys I like, I don’t have any plan on I mean, I do sometimes, if the team, let’s say we’ve got a tremendous back to basket score, and there’s a real deficiency, and we’re going to attack that, or whatever it might be. But generally, I’m a huge proponent of the game dictating where shots come from, who shoots the shots.”

“You know, we do a couple things here or there. I ran a play to get Eli a post up on purpose. I ran a play to get Meechie a shot. Might have been the first three made across from their bench. That was a play that we knew he was going to get a catch and shoot. We ran a play for Kobe (Knox) late just you know, hadn’t gotten a lot of touches to get a little touch around the basket. He did. He didn’t finish it, but he got a touch run a basket. I wanted to see what Mike (Sharavjamts) looked like down there.”

“So we do, from time to time, say, Okay, here’s a moment that we would try to take a look at this. But generally speaking, 75% of the game or better, I would like to be dictated, basically, by what the defense is doing. And that’s why the word I use more than anything when I’m yelling at us offensively is move. It’s the word I use more than anything move. And then someone else will have to move when you move into their space, and that creates movement. And then the ball will also move. So move, screen. Someone make decisions. That’s my recipe. I mean, and attack. I do say attack also lot of times So, but that’s my recipe for offense, and I like to have guys that can then make those decisions and, you know, and make plays for themselves and for one another.”

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