Lamont Paris explains South Carolina's lighter non-conference scheduling process

South Carolina has always had a safer non-conference schedule under head coach Lamont Paris, and that looks to be the case once again for the 2025-26 season.

The season officially tips off on Tuesday, Nov. 4, as the Gamecocks will welcome in North Carolina A&T. After that, they’ll play eight more games against mid-major teams, plus four against high-majors, to get ramped up for SEC play in January.

While the non-conference strength of schedule rankings aren’t out yet, South Carolina shouldn’t run into a ton of issues through the first two months of the season. Sure, there could be a loss or two along the way, but it’s nothing new for the program to have an easier schedule to start the year.

In Paris’ first three seasons, the Gamecocks had non-conference schedules that ranked moderately low in college basketball: 287th (2022-23), 289th (2023-24), 233rd (2024-25). In that time, they played a total of five Quad 1 games and had 10 Quad 3/4 games in each of those seasons.

This has been done by design, though. Given how challenging SEC play is, Paris doesn’t see the sense in making the schedule tougher than it already usually is.

“We had 18 conference games last year, and I think 13 were Quad 1 games, and five were Quad 2 out of all of our games last year,” Paris said on 107.5 The Game last Thursday. “So just the way our league is, at some point, there’s not non-conference and conference. At some point, you look down at what you did, and you play a ridiculous amount of Quad 1 games in a season.”

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Paris noted there will be some tough non-conference games on the schedule this year. The Gamecocks will play in the Greenbrier Tip-Off against Butler and Northwestern in late November. Both of those teams ranked in KenPom’s top 75 last year.

Per usual, there’s the annual Clemson matchup, which figures to be the toughest game since it’s on the road. Two weeks before that, South Carolina hosts Virginia Tech in the ACC/SEC Challenge. The Hokies are coming off a rough season where they ranked 164th in KenPom.

“None of those will be pushovers,” Paris said. “Those will all be real challenges.”

The Gamecocks will also face two more ACC teams this year, albeit in the preseason. Paris said they’ll scrimmage with Georgia Tech, in addition to an exhibition with NC State on Oct. 26.

“Both of those games are typical games that you use the mid-major type teams or lower-level teams,” Paris said. “Even for those, we’re doing high-major teams in both our scrimmage as well as our exhibition game. So those are two more talent challenges for us.”

But for the most part, the schedule will not be too overwhelming. Most of those early-season games will be against Quad 3/4 teams. Over the last three years, the Gamecocks are 25-5 under Paris in those level-tier games.

Paris said there’s a component of challenging the team early in the season. But he also knows this is a brand-new team he has with 12 newcomers who weren’t here last season. Having the easier early portion of the schedule allows him to figure out what he has on his roster.

“That’s not to say that you’re going to roll out of bed and beat anybody. But you do need to have a little buffer in a couple of these games so that you can play this guy extended minutes,” he said. “You can play this combination of players. You can see if this guy can play that position. I think those are things that are very important in determining what your team is ultimately going to look like.”

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