Everything Lamont Paris said following South Carolina's win over Radford

South Carolina basketball defeated Radford 87-58 on Tuesday night at Colonial Life Arena. Afterwards, head coach Lamont Paris spoke to the media.

Here’s what he had to say.

Opening Statement

“I thought it was a good team effort, really good team effort, good team win. I thought as we built a lead, as we got into the three, four, five minute mark of the game, we did a much better job. You’re always looking for growth in your group, and there’s an example of growth. We handled the end of the game significantly better than we did in the last one.

“I thought we did a bunch of things that we had asked them to do. The two points of emphasis for us were defensive rebounding, we talked about that ad nauseam. And we talked about guarding the ball with resistance in a way that we were not going to foul very much. I thought the officials did a really good job in some tough spots to let the play, play out and really try to decipher who was initiating contact.

“I thought there was three or four really good no-calls where we were specifically trying not to foul, and a couple times they called fouls and I thought we did foul, so kudos to our guys for taking a gameplan, specific points of emphasis, and then being out there and really concentrating on trying to get those things done. I thought that was good.”

Lamont, you mentioned growth. How much have you seen Elijah Strong grow since he got here, especially a game like tonight where he was flying around the court and making a lot of shots?

“Yeah, he was really good. He’s really talented, especially on the offensive end and I’m sure he would tell you, we’ve talked about some of his habits. He’s just had some bad defensive habits. He’s gotten better at some of those. I thought today was a good example of that. I thought he was significantly better in some of the decisions that he makes defensively.

“But offensively, he’s been really good. Honestly, he’s been really good since the day he got here. In the summer, he was one guy that was capable of more things than what we had originally anticipated. That’s the world of recruiting transfers in a small 30-day or whatever it is window. You don’t know as much about these guys than what you see on tape. The area offensively of real growth for him is some of his back-to-the-basket stuff. Today, he was really good. He made two tough turn-around jumpers. Going to that shoulder, we’ve encouraged him to do because he has good touch.

“He made a nice little baby hook over the middle, which I’m sure Tanner Bronson was happy to see that one go in. Who knows how many repetitions that those guys have done. He even drew a foul on a really aggressive good duck-in that he had, so all good signs of growth. We’re not there yet, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was good to see that when guys have focused on one or two things, collectively they can get those things done.”

Lamont, nearly 50 points inside the paint tonight. How nice is that to see, especially on another night where the three-point shots weren’t falling as consistently?

“That’s really good, you have to be able to generate some stuff around the basket. What was really encouraging was two of the ways that we did it. One was by way of post-ups. We threw it in there a couple of times. I mentioned the ones that Elijah had, we also had Eli Ellis in there a couple of times. For those that don’t know, he’s very comfortable around that area with his back to the basket. That was one way we generated some paint points, and another way we did it was really good cutting, we had some really good cuts.

“I thought Kobe Knox really made some tremendous cuts…none of those are predicated upon something that we’ve said, they all have to kind of read them based on what the defense is doing, and there’s more growth. We hadn’t been doing that as much, and this is a game that we talked a little bit more about it, and he did that. So it was good to get those points generated and be able to get some stuff around the basket.

“Man, some of those first threes that we had. Holy smokes, we had some nice clean looks early. Sometimes, it’s going to be like that. But it’s nice that you can still have that type of efficiency from two-point land when you’re struggling, by your standard, from the three-point line.”

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It seemed like 40 minutes of really solid basketball from you guys: no real runs from them and no real lulls from you guys, is that part of the process as well?

“Yeah, I think so. And there were only one or two situations in which we had a timeout and then we talked to the guys about a couple of things. They cleaned it up pretty quickly. I speak in analogy to these guys sometimes, but one of them that I use is the training wheels on a bicycle, and at the end of the day I want these guys to be able to ride the bike on their own. In the meantime, I’ll be there trying to help them, but we’ve kind of taken the training wheels off at this point.

“Sometimes when that happens, you fall down, and you learn how to balance a little bit better and you keep moving. But ultimately, I want these guys to be able to take this thing over for themselves. And I think those situations, just the fact that a small run didn’t turn into a big run, a couple of turnovers at times didn’t bleed into something wild. They’re talking to themselves differently. They’re saying things that have substance to them: real actual words. I know in 2025 that doesn’t happen that much, but we got guys really talking to each other and saying things that are very important to the game that normally they wouldn’t want to say.

“We’ve got a few guys; obviously Meechie has been really good at that. He’s spoken our language for a long time having been here the longest. But we’ve got a lot of other guys that have been doing that too, and once they’ve been doing that, I’m out of the picture a little bit more. Honestly, that’s how I would like it.”

Lamont, tonight it was Elijah Strong, but it just seems like every night whether it’s Grant or Eli or Kobe in the exhibition game that someone is coming off the bench and getting into double figures. What does that trend say about the depth of this team?

“I talked about it earlier, that I thought that this was probably the overall deepest team that I’ve been around. It’s also the first time we’ve had 15 guys, scholarship guys, on the roster, but we have a lot of guys that can do some things on any particular day. That’s nice. It’s nice for a lot of things. It’s nice because no one’s just guaranteed to stay out there when they’re playing poorly. When they’re not on their best behavior as a teammate and shot selection seems to go a certain way, we don’t really have problems with that too much, knock on wood.

“But it is nice to have just a lot of guys that can go in. And you feel comfortable about what they’re going to do when they go out there. It actually goes a little beyond that, because a lot of these guys have some firepower. It’s not like you throw a guy in off the bench and it’s like ‘ok, I hope he kind of holds it down, if he gets six to eight points that’d be great.’ We’ve got a lot of guys that could, under the right circumstances, score. Like you said, double figures. Some of these guys could really have big games off the bench if the stars align right.

“Not a lot of teams have that many guys that have that ability but then also are willing to play that role that is their role. I think that’s a very rare combination, and it’s early on in the season, but it does appear we have that.”

If my research is right, 58% shooting tonight, that’s the highest ever in a game for you at South Carolina. Is this your best shooting team to this point at South Carolina?

“In theory. I mean, I think we’ll have this conversation in April and see how it ended up turning out. But in theory, here’s what I do believe: I think we have more guys on this team that are likely to make it when they shoot it. The number of guys that we have, that when they shoot it I feel like it should go in, is higher than we’ve ever had here for sure. Particularly if we’re talking from the three-point line. But today, it was from the two-point range and in the paint.

“We generated some pretty high-quality shots, we pump-faked. I think you guys probably saw, if you were watching me at all, a couple of guys had great pump-fakes. I don’t even know how to control myself on a couple of them. Grant Polk had one, he had two, on the same play he finished it, so that made me happy. But it has potential to be a really good shooting team. And if we can continue to develop a couple of these areas, we’ve got some guys that can create off the dribble.

“Meechie, if you look at the first play of the game. What a pass that he created to Kobe. That’s going to be the first thing that you do, it’s not a set play for him to throw that ball there. He also could’ve just put his head down and attacked the rim and thrown something wild up. But to have a guy like him, your leading scorer, come out there and make that play, that’s a rare quality also. We’ve got a lot of guys that can make some plays off the dribble. You look at him and you look at Eli, and you look at Mike in particular. But even guys like Kobe, he’s done some good attacking.

“Ultimately, to at last answer your question, it has a chance to be a really good shooting team.”

With Meechie going off, obviously he was at least close to fine, coming back in. Was he just scared of something in terms of injury?

“It must’ve hurt him. He came out for a reason. He stopped the play and called a timeout, so he certainly was hurt. I didn’t really talk too much to our trainers about it. But then he came back, so obviously really happy to see that he was able to come back into the game. So, stuff like that happens. Sometimes, things just hurt really badly. And for a guy like him, for it to hurt in a way…he called a timeout and it obviously was painful at the time.

“Thankfully, it was something that he was able to come back from and be available for the rest of the game. Two years ago, he had an ankle injury early on in the season. He had had such an incredible fall and preseason and just never really returned back, so when something happens to any of our guys, but we’ve talked long and hard about my relationship with him and him coming back and all this whole thing, but you hold your breath for a little bit but it was nice to see him come back.”

Lamont, heading to Greenbrier this weekend, two better opponents this weekend for you guys. After seeing the way you guys kind of had that complete type of performance tonight, does that give you more confidence that this group is going to go out there and have a good weekend, potentially?

“I don’t know. I mean, I’m always confident. I think the true confidence that matters is their confidence. So hopefully, they feel like ‘hey, we’ve cleaned a couple of things up, we’re playing better, let’s go out there and play.’ I know they’re excited about the challenges that lie ahead for us. But I tell you, I like the ways that they’ve changed the rules in the preseason, so we did a closed scrimmage with Georgia Tech. We played against some good players. We did an exhibition game against NC State, who’s in the top 25, and we led for the vast majority.

“So just from a confidence standpoint, those are the things that hopefully they’ll draw upon. I think we’re so focused, I used a golf analogy today. I use these golf analogies all the time, but ultimately at this time of the year, you’re playing against the course. Tiger Woods, why I personally believe he’s the greatest of all time is because he was really able to do that against whoever. Whether it was Sergio Garcia who was playing his best one weekend, and then the next weekend it was Phil Mickelson who was playing his best golf that he’d ever played. And Tiger was really able to channel what he needed to do on that course to play well on that course.

“He wasn’t worried about who he was playing against, so this team of the year, that’s what we’re focused on. What does good look like for us, and can we reproduce that and make tweaks to get better at that, and the byproduct of that is generally being in a pretty good position to compete at the end of the game.”

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