Everything Lamont Paris said after South Carolina basketball's overtime win over Southern Miss

South Carolina basketball survived in overtime against Southern Miss, 83-79, on Sunday night at Colonial Life Arena. Afterwards, head coach Lamont Paris spoke to the media.

Here’s what he had to say.

Opening Statement

“Alright now. This might be the most exhausted I’ve ever been after a game in my whole life. Maybe it just means I’m getting old. I don’t think so. That was exhausting. That was an exhausting game–the roller coaster of everything that was happening.

“I hate when someone says, ‘That was not our finest effort.’ I hate that. I think that detracts from what the other team did. I don’t want to do that for one second. Those guys are more competitive, and they were tougher than us. They were certainly tougher than us today. They might just be tougher than us, period. I don’t say that to say anything other than they’ve got some tough guys, tough, competitive, relentless guys. I hope that someone is giving them the credit that is due them, as they look at this game.

“Having said all that–this is going to sound crazy because I said it at the NC State exhibition game, and I think it sounded like a great thing to say because we lost, but we won this one–the way that the game turned out was perfect. This is exactly what you would want to draw up. You get late-game free throws by Eli (Ellis). You get Meechie in a full-court press situation, and we don’t make it happen, we turn it over. You get a barrage that has to happen from one player in particular. And what Meechie did? We needed it at that time. We threw the 1-3-1 (zone) out there. Because you’re always going to feel like, well, when’s a good time to do it? Up 20? Can we throw it out there? Well, we had to. We had to throw it out there. Well, it was good for us. So, you could never script this in a way that your team could learn more from it. So, I thought it was perfect for every single person other than the coach. So, that was a hard game, but we signed up to do this stuff.”

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Responses to Reporters

You said in the preseason that you guys would shoot a lot of threes–you hit a lot early, didn’t hit in the middle, and Meechie went Supernova there at the end. So, that’s the approach for the season. What do you say to the team when the shots just aren’t going in?

“Well, I mean, I think the first thing you do is address the quality of what the shot is. You know, this was an extreme. This was an extreme. We had 34 attempts, I think, that’s what they said. No, 43 (a school record)…so, 48 points on 16 makes…so, from a points-per-possession look, we’re actually in a fine spot. I mean, you don’t want to have droughts. I think the number was extremely high for a couple of reasons.

“They play that way. I mean, they play that way. And when we did try to drive it, we didn’t have a lot of success. We weren’t playing off of two feet and then pump faking. There’s nobody on planet Earth–I do feel confident in saying this–I don’t think any coach on planet Earth has spent more time in the last 48 hours working on it–it’s impossible. No one has, and then we still wouldn’t do it consistently in the game.

“So because of that, we weren’t having a lot of success around the basket. It was hard to get post touches, just the way they play. They switch everything, and then now you’ve got a bigger guy like a Nordin, or Elijah, or whoever it might be down there, trying to tussle with a quick guy. And then they’re built-in from both sides. There’s no weakside to them. Help is always coming. So, then they skip–you can skip for threes, and I would say mediocre, at worst, quality threes. That’s a worst, probably, quality of three that you get in those situations. That’s why you shoot. And, you know, I felt good about the quality of shots that we generally generated from three. One or two, here or there, but I think from a percentage standpoint, they probably were pretty good looks. It’s extreme based on the way that they play.

“We did it once when I was at Chattanooga. We played Bellarmine, and they had a philosophy, basically, you will never drive all the way in. It’s impossible. We have too many people there. And so we kicked it out. We made 18 threes on that day. So, I had three teams at Chat, out of the five teams that I coached there, I had three teams make 18 threes. So, this is not new that I like that. I like threes. This is an extreme, though, because of how they play defense. But I like open shots. Sometimes it’s a layup. The only challenged shot that I really don’t mind at all is if you can go down and hoss around the basket, and you get five feet away, the guy’s gonna challenge you. You still can shoot that one if you can make it. Eli’s done that a couple times. You’ve seen it. But you know, if threes are open, go ahead and shoot ’em.”

Abu Yarmah wasn’t dressed for tonight. Is he redshirting, or is it a health thing?

“Of all the things that happened in that game, I’m surprised that that came up so quickly. There were 1472 things that were wild in that game. But, yes, Abu has decided that he wants to redshirt, so I’m happy for him and the things that he’s going to attack this year, to be able to spend some extra time on some things. But he felt really good and comfortable about it. And so, if he’s happy, I’m happy.”

You didn’t do a whole lot of subbing down the stretch, and you kept two freshmen in the game a lot late. What was your thought process with the closing five? You did put Kobe in there at the very end.

(On Kobe Knox) “That was based on what we were trying to do defensively. Like, he was better at doing that than Hayden. We were switching a bunch of stuff to try to take away a three. So, in theory, he’s done that more often, and he’s probably better suited to do that with a team that drives it like that, versus Hayden. So, that’s it.”

(On the rest of the question) “But typically, we get to a certain point in the game, the flow of the game, goes a certain way. And, you know, guys are doing this, guys are doing that, playing well, struggling, whatever it might be, but we get to some point in the game, and those dudes are the dudes, for the most part. Sometimes, there are more guys that are also playing well, and you can feel like you can make a move based on a substitution that they made based on a play you might want to run.

“But I also looked down and saw that some of these guys hadn’t been in the game for a while, because we needed to make and we made the run we needed to make, right? We had to make that run, or we lose. We made that run with that group. A couple of tongues were hanging on the ground, it looked like. But we had to keep that group in there. That’s all. Our chances were better. They were being effective in the zone. [If] we change one guy in the zone who’s not reading things the way that it’s morphing around what they’re doing, and then it’s not nearly as effective. So, we just kept that group. They were doing good things offensively, and that was the group that took us to the Promised Land tonight.”

What did you sense about Meechie late in the game that helped him make those big shots?

“I told him to make them. I said, ‘Hey, make that one, and then come down and then make this one.’ I don’t know. I don’t know even how to answer that. Nothing. I mean, he knows I have an extremely high amount of belief in him, as do I with all of our guys. Honestly, it’s why they go in the game. But I have a unique relationship with him. I think everybody would recognize that, aside from the fact that he was here…but I’ve known their family. We have a new relationship that way. And so, I mean, I can coach him. I can coach him hard. I can tell him the truth. That is a dying concept that is, you know, it’s fading. But I can tell him the truth. He wants and needs me to tell him the truth. He’ll tell you that.

“But he also knows that while these things are happening, he’s going to be very comfortable in the role that he has for us. And so I just think he was comfortable, and he knew that we needed probably to step on the gas a little bit in those moments. And so he had his foot over the gas pedal, and it was good that he made them. But we’ve got other guys. You know, Eli was aggressive in the first half. And so with Meechie, specifically, that was also not the first time that Meechie has done something similar to that, in a scenario where we actually had to have it happen.”

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Three guys scored 70 points tonight. Is that another extreme situation?

“Yeah, I mean, when you look at three guys did the heavy lifting in this game, our last game, I think we have five guys in double figures and two more at nine. So, you’ve got seven guys essentially in double-figures in the last game. So, probably somewhere in between is where all the dust will settle when this is all finished. But it’s nice to have a couple of guys that can do that. You know, it’s nice, but you can’t rely on it. I think that’s fool’s gold if you’re going to rely on it. But, you know, in some moments where you’re running in mud, you can’t get things going, sometimes it’s nice. This is at every level of any sport, really. It’s nice to have a person or a couple of people that can say, ‘Okay, I need to do a little bit more. I’m going to do a little bit more right now.’ So, you know, it’s probably somewhere in between those, those two games.”

At the end of regulation, it was tied. They get an easy layup. What happened there defensively?

(Some clarifying questions and responses) “Okay, yeah, so that was just the man-to-man. That was a man-to-man situation. The guy put his head down and went all the way to the basket. I mean, I don’t know how to say it any other way than that. And that happened too many times in the game. That happened once against the zone even, which that blew my mind. But the zone was very effective. I contemplated staying with the zone on a couple possessions.

“At the end, we had a little confusion. Oh, here it is. I remember. We were “cornfused” on that play, which ultimately comes back to the coach. It does. We come out of a timeout. I think we’ve just come out of a timeout, and we were supposed to–this is the play–I think that we were supposed to be in zone again. Wires got crossed. You know, 80%, I always tell these guys, 80% stinks. Now, in school, 80% was pretty good for me, but four out of five guys on the floor doing one thing, and then one guy doing another is no good. And so that’s what we had on that possession. I think then we were late trying to get back into what we wanted to get into. And, you know, at that point, we’re scrambled. I think that’s the one that we’re talking about. We were supposed to be in zone. And we came out and did like, half zone, half man.”

At the very end of regulation, there was a little scrum there near halfcourt. Did you think there should have been a foul call there?

“It could have been, I don’t know. I haven’t watched it again. I mean, live, I was hopeful, but when it didn’t, I also didn’t beg for that one. I was begging for some other stuff, but I did not beg for that one, because, in that scenario, it’s rare that that’s going to get called unless it’s something that’s, you know, clear and egregious. And, so I look at it, maybe it was when it was all said and done. But live, I was just hopeful that we would pick the thing up and, somehow, the basketball gods would make that shot fall in.”

Your team leader in +/- was a true freshman who took zero shot attempts. What can you say about Hayden Assemian and what he provided tonight?

“I’ve been so impressed with that guy. So impressed. It’s hard for me to quantify how impressed I’ve been with what he does. One, I already know he plays hard, yet when I see him playing hard, I still have to scratch my head about how hard the guy’s playing. So there’s one.

“And then, he also continues to grow. He’s got some things to clean up. He’s a young guy. But I’ll tell you what he’s done a tremendous job of doing, is knowing where his bread is buttered, and then sticking right there. And I say that in the highest regard, because there are just so many guys that don’t understand that, especially early in their careers. And so he’s found a way that’s going to make him a valuable asset to us. He just, again, plays hard. He’s not afraid to be physical.

“He’s very–this is probably not the right word, but that’s the only word that’s coming to my mind right now–obedient in terms of what we have asked of him. And again, I say that in the highest regard, because some guys don’t do it because they can’t process it. Other guys don’t do it because maybe they don’t believe in it. For Hayden, he tries to do everything we ask him to do, and he’s found real success with his ability to do that.

“And also, this guy’s got a lot of room to grow as an offensive player, and he’s an explosive athlete. And he looks like he doesn’t look like a freshman, not to me anyway. But I’ve been really, really impressed with how he’s found his niche in our offense. You know, he’s one of the guys that probably won’t shoot threes this year too often. And having said that, holy smokes, this guy is extremely valuable. He gets in and out of screens. He ducks in in such a way that you have to commit to defending the duck-in. It’s not like a half-duck-in that you can just defend with one arm. You have to commit to it, or he’s going to bury you. And there’s a real place for that.

“And then, on top of that, he’s really processed the stuff that we have asked him and committed to trying to do those things. And it’s really worked out well for him. He’s a great kid, too. I’m happy for him.”

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