COLUMBIA, S.C. — For South Carolina men’s basketball coach Lamont Paris, the best part of the Gamecocks’ transformation from forgotten in the Southeastern Conference to the program’s first NCAA tournament berth in seven years was watching players with few connections going into the season become closely bonded along the way.
Paris hopes to forge a similarly tight-knit team again because his Gamecocks, whose rise was one of the biggest surprises of last season, will be vastly different than the group that knocked off Kentucky and Tennessee and finished with a program-record 26 wins.
“I don’t think there’s any secret that I thought it was one of the best qualities that we had,” Paris said of the chemistry and good feelings “We played well together. Guys enjoyed playing with each other and played for one another.”
The Gamecocks had gone 11-21 in 2022-23, their first season under Paris. He took over at South Carolina after capping a five-year run as coach at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a sweep of the Southern Conference regular-season and tournament titles and the Mocs’ first NCAA berth since 2016.
For the Gamecocks, this offseason could be as challenging as the last after losing four players who combined to make 116 starts last season, including leading scorer Meechie Johnson, who averaged 14.1 points and 29.1 minutes per game. Johnson was the only one in the quartet with eligibility left and surprised many when he returned to Ohio State, where he played before coming to South Carolina two years ago.