Jordan Butler shines in South Carolina win over Presbyterian

South Carolina entered the 2025-26 season with an almost completely new roster, returning only three players from its 2024-25 group. After the season tipped off, only two of those players remained in the rotation as sophomore Cam Scott took a redshirt.

The flipped roster has led to a change in identity for the Gamecock offense as the group relies more on perimeter shooting.

However, on Wednesday, it was one of South Carolina’s returners who helped lead the Gamecocks to a 3-0 start to the season with a dominant game inside the paint.

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Junior forward Jordan Butler returned for his second season with South Carolina. As one of two traditional bigs on the Gamecock roster, he knew he had to grow on the interior. In fact, it’s something that Paris challenged him to do in the offseason.

“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,” Paris said. “We ran a mile right before this season started, and so I challenged him to that; he blew it out of the water, honestly.”

The change in habits led to a career-high 11 points against the Presbyterian Blue Hose on Wednesday night.

The small sample size to start the season also sees Butler almost doubling his field goal percentage from 34% to 62%. He shot 14-41 in all of last season. To start 2025-26, he’s 5-8.

“Today, I think, was one of his most active days I’ve ever seen him in practice or a game,” Paris said of Butler’s performance.

The aggression also helped Butler get to the free-throw line more, going 5-5 from the charity stripe. For comparison, Butler only made 10 free throws the entire 2024-25 season.

Paris pointed to a moment in Wednesday’s game where he pulled Butler aside to point out that what he gave is what they need nightly.

“I pulled him over during the game. At one point, he had moved his feet incredibly well. He’s very agile, incredibly agile,” Paris said. “And so 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. We expect that from you all the time.’”

Paris and Butler himself hope that after a strong performance, his aggression and activity inside can become a regular thing.

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,” Paris said.

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