Lamont Paris assesses South Carolina's new-look roster for next season

After a 12-20 season, good for a dead-last finish in the SEC, all signs pointed to changes in the offseason. For South Carolina’s sake, this was the only viable option.

Since the season ended at the SEC Tournament, head coach Lamont Paris has completely flipped his roster. The Gamecocks will return three players from the 2024-25 team. The remaining spots will be filled by 11 new players — six transfers and five high school recruits.

These changes came at the expense of 12 players departing from the program. In a short amount of time, though, Paris put together a team that he feels good about.

“I think we did as well as we could,” Paris said. “I think we did a really good job with making pivots when you had to make pivots, and that’s just, you have to adapt and did.”

Well before the offseason began, South Carolina already had four incoming freshmen signed for next season. That included four-star guard Eli Ellis and a trio of three-stars with EJ Walker, Grant Polk, and Hayden Assemian. Paris also added Abu Yarmah, who played with Ellis and Assemian at Moravian Prep and the YNG Dreamerz in Overtime Elite.

Then, in the transfer portal, the Gamecocks brought in players from all over the country, ranging from coast to coast. In total, they added three guards (Meechie Johnson: Ohio State, Kobe Knox: USF, Mike Sharavjamts: Utah) and three forwards (Christ Essandoko: Providence, Elijah Strong: Boston College, Nordin Kapic: UC San Diego).

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South Carolina did lose out on one commitment, Treysen Eaglestaff, who had pledged to the Gamecocks but re-entered the portal and signed with West Virginia. Losing Eaglestaff, one of the country’s top scorers with 18.9 points per game, was a big blow. But Paris was satisfied with how he and his staff were able to rebound.

“I think we’ve done a really good job of turning the page, getting on to the next, gathering information, quickly developing relationships with the people that you can as quickly as you can, and then assessing,” he said. “I think it’s a constant assessment of what you have, what you need, what you might potentially need.”

The two main attributes that Paris targeted in the recruiting process were skill and experience. While next season is still months away, he felt the roster is a lot closer to what it was two seasons ago when the Gamecocks made the NCAA Tournament.

“We had a very skilled passing team two seasons ago, and that served us really well. We were not as accomplished in that area, and just for me and my DNA, that’s always an important thing for me,” Paris said. “And so we wanted to get back to a little more feel and skill, and then also combine that with some good experience.”

With an almost entirely different roster compared to a season ago, there comes the process of building chemistry. South Carolina will have an entire summer to do so before next season begins. But Paris plans to help expedite that process as best he can.

“I think if you have an older group, it can happen a little more organically. But when you’re talking about the volume of new faces,” Paris said, “I do think you have to be intentional to some degree with trying to set up some situations or circumstances in which they’re going to have to have conversations or do things that are different than just basketball things.”

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