Everything Lamont Paris said following South Carolina's loss to Northwestern

South Carolina basketball lost to Northwestern 79-77 on Sunday in the Greenbrier Tip-Off. Afterwards, head coach Lamont Paris spoke to the media.

Opening Statement

“Tough loss for the Gamecocks today. We dug a hole, we couldn’t make any shots. And then we found our rhythm, dug back into it. I give the guys a lot of credit for that. And then found a way to put ourselves in position to have a great chance to win the game. Couldn’t make a play, on a couple of those last plays…we had a chance to take a lead…so there were some good things that were in there but we have to keep growing.

“We need to grow. Probably in some areas maybe a little more rapidly. Certain guys a little more rapidly. We need to keep our eyes on the fact that we need to continue to grow.”

Lamont, after watching what happened out there, what’s the bigger issue in your opinion, the way you guys shot for the first 36 minutes of the game or the fact that you guys went the last two and a half minutes without a basket?

“I mean, two and a half minute stretch, that happens all the time. We didn’t get a basket, but Mike‘s free throws were in there, weren’t they? Sure, you gotta score when you get opportunities. In that moment, we had some good opportunities. Meechie had an opportunity at the rim and it goes out of bounds. Those are smaller in the grand scheme of things, they’re heightened because of what the score is when they take place, but we had a lot of things.

“Hayden Assemian gets a dunk, misses it, uncontested. There’s two points we’d like to have. We had a variety of those, on top of the fact that I thought we had good shots. One timeout, I said ‘Hey, just keep playing. We have had better shots than they have had from three. They’ve made them. We haven’t made them.’ You gotta calm down, relax, whatever that is, and be confident and shoot those things. We can’t stop shooting them, that’s who we’ve been, and they’re good shots.”

“I thought by and large they were good shots. We just couldn’t make them. But let’s not kid ourselves, when we score 77 points, we’re not going to break any records with that. But if you give up 79, it’s going to be hard to win. We’ve gotta do a better job overall defensively.”

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What do you take away from this game defensively, and you’re obviously not in the game without Elijah, but he hasn’t been the best guy on the interior defensively, did you think about subbing him out for the last play?

“No, we had the group in there that had gotten us to that point. Bring in a guy that hadn’t played the last 14 minutes, then you’d be asking me why I did that. But not really. That was the group that was in there, and they had done a good job…a couple times we got the ball to one of their best players. We trapped him on the opposite block. That was what they ended up scoring on, was that what they were trying to get? I don’t think it was. We made them do something different, they got the ball to a guy and he made a play. I wish we could’ve defended it better, but he made a play.”

What allows, in your opinion, Meechie to go from not being able to really make many shots most of the day then when you guys need points there after being down 12, he just turns it on and goes on a run by himself?

“Yeah, I don’t know. If I could figure that out, I’d alter the part that prevents him from making shots early in the game. But, he’s an emotional guy. He’s performed in a lot of moments in his career, but he’s also an emotional guy. He’s mature, and he’s still maturing. I told him that today, he was having some struggles making shots, and he got a little emotional and needed a pep talk.”

“One day, he won’t need that. I’m here to provide it, whenever he or anyone else on our team does. But you’ve done enough if you’re him, some of these guys who clearly have belief in your ability to do some things, so you miss a couple of shots, that’s part of it. Maybe try to get a different part of your game going. You be a high-assist guy, or a take-it-to-the-basket guy, or a get-to-the-free-throw-line guy, or whatever that looks like.

“So that’s still an area that he’s still growing as a player that way. But I don’t know what it is. He’s got a flair for the dramatic in that sense. I was glad he was able to do that and we were able to get some points when we needed them. And at one point, whatever it was, five, six minutes left, I don’t know what the exact margin was but we needed three and a half, we needed to make some buckets happen, and then we did.

“And he got the steal. I wasn’t even looking at that point, we had scored and I was talking to one of the assistants quickly and the next thing I know we had the ball back. So there’s a play that he made also, but yeah he’s a good player that can do that. We got to find a way to be as consistent as we can. I think we all are shooting for that in mind.”

You wanted a little more physicality from the guys after last game. Did you see that today?

“Yeah, I mean this when I say it, you have to be focused on growth. In a perfect world, you get growth and you win, but you have to be focused on growth right now. And so, certainly it appears that there was some of that. We’ll be able to really test as we continue to move forward if our increased physicality is now a new brand of basketball for some of these guys that weren’t doing that, or if it was just because they were all juiced up because I said something that inspired them or made them mad or shamed them or whatever it was.

“I hope that’s not the case, but we’ll see on that. But we played much more physical, much more physical brand of basketball. On the boards, we were significantly better. We were holding our ground. We even drew one or two offensive fouls for them while they were rebounding, shoving in the back or going over the back because we did block out. So there was some growth within that to that end. I thought we were much better, the rebound numbers would also suggest that, but normally the eyeball test would tell you. I didn’t need the rebound numbers to know two nights ago that we were not very good in a physical competition standpoint.”

What’s the latest on Myles Stute with the concussion and then what did you learn about this group going up against this type of quality competition?

“Yeah, I don’t want to say anything that’s not accurate as it pertains to Myles. I was told it was a concussion and I know there’s concussion protocol and they do some testing, and they’ve got a baseline that they measure all these guys early and then it’s how you’re regressing from that. So I don’t know where his initial tests were, for lack of better terminology, to gauge what the level of concussion. I’ll find that out, I just know he wasn’t available for the game so we started immediately trying to plans some things based on that.

“I guess we found out that we can fight. We did it in the Southern Miss game also, got ourselves in a bad spot then called in all of our chips to get a W in that game. We were calling in more chips today, and we were one chip short. Two, as it turns out. We have guys that know how to fight. Particularly once we hit a run, they recognize that we’ve got a little thing going and then they can pile on top of that. The real ones though, are the ones that prevent the bad situations from turning into worse situations. That is the most valuable growth that you need, so when we can get to that point that’ll be good.

“We got a team…they want to win, they’re competitive that way. It’s still early in the season. We’re learning all kinds of things just about individuals more than anything. We have an unselfish team, we’ve got some work to do with some of the defensive things. I’ll watch the tape again, but the guys put themselves in position to win the game again, and we almost did it in the Butler game if we’re being real. How to navigate the first 37 minutes better in a way that we’re not in that moment if we don’t have to be, sometimes you will be because a team’s better, maybe they played better, but can you navigate that better so that as you’re coming into those last three-to-four minutes, you’re in a better scenario than what we were tonight.”

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Along those same lines, what’s the process of that look like? Does that come down to tweaking your starting lineup or rotation or how you want to go about things early in games or how do you start that?

“Continuing to troubleshoot some things and then seeing, ‘Ok, where is change, where is growth possible?’ There’s still a couple of guys doing a couple of things that at this stage, we’ve said it enough times and they’re things that don’t help us. At some point, if you’re going to not grow and still be that same guy, you have to have some limited minutes or reps. And so, we’re about at the point where that’s happening for some guys. As I mentioned earlier, we need some tangible growth on a couple of things with a couple of guys.

“Overall, there were definitely some good things. Ready to get back into the lab. That’s what we do, just troubleshoot and see what it looks like, and try to make some adjustments. We made a change in the starting lineup tonight, because we had to. It probably got Elijah into the game a little quicker, and he played well while he was out there. JB (Butler) started at the four, he did a good job while he was in there. But is JB the guy that does a good job consistently and then every now and then has an off night, or is he the guy that occasionally is going to have a good night? And we have probably five guys that are in some sort of similar situation.

“They’re capable of having good days, but what does it look like from a consistency standpoint? Who’s going to be reliable? The best ability is reliability. To me, it’s second-to-none.”

With Nordin‘s limited minutes this weekend, is that just a thing with other guys playing better in your opinion, or is he kind of still working his way back from the injury he had?

“I think he’s healthy, as far as I know. Your rhythm gets thrown off, and sometimes it gets you all jammed up. I think he’s a little jammed up. But yeah, I think it’s a combination of he’s trying to work back to find his rhythm but at the same time some other guys have played pretty well. So then what it does is make your margin of error, individually, a little smaller. Right? Some guys have earned a larger margin of error, and that’s the reality of it. Every team is like that.

“He’s got a little bit smaller margin of error, so then when you go out and couple of things happen, whether it’s bad luck or because of something you didn’t do, you’re more likely to make a change pretty quickly. Then again, as someone’s playing well, you’re then going to give Elijah as many of these opportunities as you can on a day where he’s doing what he’s doing offensively. He created a lot of offense, Elijah did for us. You’re going to give some of these other guys opportunities. And then we got a lot of guys at that point.

“That’s why I say again, consistency. It’s consistency. We’ve started, and I’ve mentioned this to the guys, not to go on forever, but I said sometimes you get a team and in game number one and game number 32, you have the same exact starting lineup and probably every game in between there. This is not that team. And so we’ve got a lot of guys that are close and similar to guys, if you’re working on consistency. Whoever’s ultimately going to be the most consistent, I think that happens with most teams, whoever’s the most consistent will be the ones that are out there.”

Your three freshmen who play a lot of minutes had the worst plus/minuses on the team today, but they’re obviously freshmen, still growing, what did you see out of those guys in their first big step up in competition and do you think that games like this will be kind of a spark to help them grow some, to learn?

“These guys probably have the most room for growth, just by virtue of being young and having less experience. But there were good things throughout, Grant hit a three in the Butler game, and then today strokes one and gets an offensive rebound and stick-back. Those kinds of things, he learned. He got backdoored for a layup. It’s a two-point game that we’re in. So I hope that stings so badly that he understands that there’s no reason for that and I never can let that happen in that scenario.

“A lot of other guys learned a lot of different things. I like the young group, I do. It was good experience for them. They played minutes, had some struggles. Eli had some struggles today, but he was ok. They’ll be days like that for everybody. Meechie had two points in one of the games before this. But that kid from Purdue, he’s the number one player in the country, aren’t they saying that? A lot of people are. He had five points the other night, had a bunch of assists, but I’m sure that wasn’t on most people’s bingo card that day for him.

“Guys will have some struggles here and there. But for these young guys, they just have to take it all in, and I was hard on Hayden a little bit about that particular layup, not that it cost us the game but I want him to think that so that he learns that that’s just not something that should ever happen for you. You’re playing in the SEC. That shouldn’t happen under those circumstances, so I hope that he, as well as the other young people will take those messages and grow.”

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