2 weeks Ago
COLUMBIA – Lamont Paris calmly stepped onto a small platform inside Colonial Life Arena’s media room and took a seat. He then unfolded a slightly crinkled stat sheet and spread it flat on the table in front of him. “I’m sure the metrics are really gonna like this outcome as far as the Gamecocks are concerned,” he said.
That was Paris throwing a jab. And also speaking facts. Indeed the cybermetrics that power so much of college basketball won’t take kindly to the Gamecocks’ 74-71 loss to North Florida on Nov.
4. It’s the type of defeat that can burden a team with postseason aspirations; serving like an albatross or an anchor to weigh down the Gamecocks’ resume throughout the season. But here’s the proper context after a debacle of an encore to South Carolina’s first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2017: SEC Program Loses Season Opener After Paying Opponent $95,000 Lamont Paris is no longer perfect in season-openers.
The Gamecocks paid $95,000 to a team picked to finish seventh in the Atlantic Sun to beat them for their first-ever SEC win. Thirty games remain on South Carolina’s regular-season schedule. Exhale.
And perhaps North Florida even ends up being a very good basketball team; making South Carolina’s defeat something to be filed away under the proverbial “good loss” column. There will also come a time – perhaps much sooner rather than later – when Paris and his players will go past the point of cringing whenever the North Florida loss is mentioned; insisting what’s past is past. After all, there are no mulligans in basketball.
Yet it will be brought up again and again. Until March and perhaps beyond. The computers and formulas and guys in their basements fixated on metrics lean hard into games such as this no matter how much a team develops in the coming months.
USC stunned in season-opener against North Florida Paris’ shot at the system is rooted in recent history that shows it hasn’t thought too highly of South Carolina. That much was evident during the Gamecocks’ 13-1 start last year; their lone defeat in that stretch being a five-point loss at Clemson in which they led for nearly all but the final 10 minutes. The metrics (i.
e., the all-mighty NET) ranked them 41st. A 75-60 win over Vanderbilt on Feb.
10 made South Carolina 21-3 overall and tied atop the SEC standings. The other two losses: to a team (Alabama) that lost to eventual national champion UConn in the Final Four and a 20-17 squad (Georgia) that suffered most of its defeats after beating South Carolina. Yet, the NET deemed the Gamecocks to be 45th-best team in America.
The math/logic doesn’t compute considering the SEC later accounted for eight of the 68 teams into the NCAA Tournament. And even in the moment – that being mid-February with much data already recorded, yet much basketball to be played – how can the co-leader of a major conference have such a marginal rating? No wonder Paris is still a bit salty. But he eventually conceded his opening remarks were slightly tongue-in-cheek.
He can't sweat it right now. Because how the Gamecocks are gauged in March doesn’t matter on the Monday after Halloween. But shoring up holes now before they swell – gaps in the Gamecocks’ game that few saw developing – does matter.
“(The metrics) are gonna do their thing,” Paris said. “We’ve got to play, we’ve got to get better. We’ve got to be focused on improvement.
” There’s plenty of room for that, no doubt. And the third-year coach’s first priority is to determine if the biggest issues are physical, between the Gamecocks’ ears or inside their chests. Gamecocks' Ashlyn Watkins cleared to return to team activities South Carolina had enough miscommunication on defense to make it unacceptable; allowing North Florida to sink some 3-pointer that should’ve otherwise been contested.
Breakdowns in the paint happened that provided the outsized Ospreys (1-0) inside scoring opportunities. Both are examples of incorrect thinking, slow thinking or simply not thinking – it’s up to Paris to decide which is which and what’s more damning. There was also a 47-second stretch in the final minute that saw the Gamecocks go from leading by two points to trailing for good 69-66.
North Florida forced a turnover and had two offensive rebounds during that span; hustle plays that coaches such as Paris crave. And, of course, there was a 14-for-24 effort at the foul line. Paris attributed to otherwise dependable guys simply not making shots.
We’ll see if that’s the case as soon as today when the Gamecocks play South Carolina State. Perhaps the bigger question: who will take those shots for South Carolina? “I think we were outplayed in a lot of different ways,” Paris said. “It’s OK to not play well – that’s gonna happen from time to time.
But I thought as competitors, they dominated us. “What’s the button to push to change that? New faces? Yeah, we played a bunch of guys here and there. It’s hard if that’s the button you have to push to incite a response.
And it wasn’t there for us.” It’s last in a coach’s motivational arsenal, but threatening a seat on the bench is undefeated. But starting out 0-1, with that loss being to a mid-major team and it never going away, could make Paris more likely to reach back and wield it.
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