South Carolina basketball embraces depth under Lamont Paris

In the season-opening win over North Carolina A&T, South Carolina basketball had 12 players hit the court. All 12 ended the night with an assist. That includes freshman Eli Ellis, who led the team with five assists in his collegiate debut. But playing with this amount of players isn’t new to Lamont Paris. In fact, it’s part of his coaching identity.

Since beginning his head coaching career at Chattanooga prior to the 2017-18 season, Lamont Paris has seen 59 different players take the court, excluding the 2025-26 season in progress. While some players, such as Ta’Lon Cooper at South Carolina and Malachi Smith at Chattanooga, have played upwards of 33.0 MPG for their respective teams, most players under Paris’s tutelage spend at least 10 minutes per game on the bench and at least 10 minutes per game on the floor. Lamont Paris reiterated as much after the season-opening victory over North Carolina A&T.

“If you look back to two years ago, we had ten players that played double-figure minutes and also played in 70 percent of games or more,” Paris said. “It’s one thing to have a guy who plays five games and averages ten minutes in those games, then never plays again in the regular season.”

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During that season, South Carolina tied a school record with 26 wins. Additionally, they made the NCAA tournament for the first time since the school’s Final Four appearance in 2017. Of the ten players averaging at least 10 MPG, all played at least 26 games. With the exception of Ta’Lon Cooper (33.7 MPG), all nine other players in that group averaged between 10.0-29.1 MPG.

Last season, despite the team’s record, the Gamecocks managed to cycle in depth for the most part. Only All-SEC forward Collin Murray-Boyles averaged more than 30.0 MPG, and nine players averaged at least 10 MPG. Eight of those players saw action in at least 20 games, and Myles Stute was the lone exception. Stute, of course, was injured halfway through the season after making 14 starts.

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But Paris’s emphasis on depth seeks to prevent those types of pitfalls, in the same ideal as the “load management” designation on NBA stars.

“We can play harder when you have more guys that can go in,” Paris said. “I think (you can) sustain injury better, I think you sustain injury better, I think you can sustain foul trouble…I think you have better camaraderie when a lot of guys are going to go in a game.”

In the season-opening win, the Gamecocks saw 12 players take the court. All 12 players for South Carolina recorded an assist. In the entire 2024-25 season, South Carolina basketball didn’t record a single game with nine players tallying an assist, yet alone 12.

It’s a small sample size in a game that South Carolina was favored in by a large margin. Both of those statements are true. But the Gamecocks had several matchups with the same criteria last season, and none matched Tuesday’s output. South Carolina had zero games of 20+ assists last season, and the Gamecocks managed 24 against North Carolina A&T.

To find the last game in which South Carolina had 24 assists, one would have to travel back to 2024. On February 2, 2024, the Gamecocks tallied 25 assists in a win against Georgia. But prior to that game, the last time South Carolina had 24 or more assists was back in the 2016 NIT. In a win over High Point, the Gamecocks had 25 assists to advance to the second round of the tournament.

There is plenty of games left in the season, and the likelihood that all 12 players see action in every game is near zero. However, evidence from the season debut points to Paris continuing to cycle lineups to an above-average degree. South Carolina basketball is embracing depth, and for now it’s paying off.

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