It's been two weeks since Lamont Paris was introduced as the new king of the court at South Carolina.
The former University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball coach has been in a perpetual spin ever since, having to balance roster building and recruiting with the expanded demands of running a Southeastern Conference program. Paris racked up more triumphs than setbacks during his five years with the Mocs, especially with a 65-29 record his last three seasons, but looking down at his phone right now is a losing battle.
"I'm sitting here with 905 unread text messages," Paris said this week. "I hope some friends of mine don't take it personally when they text their congratulations and it's actually October when I get to answer. I've got to get those down a little bit. What you try to do is craft the perfect text that answers what needs to be answered but doesn't inspire a response.
"That's the magical text. It seems personal, but it doesn't trigger a response."
Paris has been calling, texting and emailing recruits along with their "moms and dads and grandparents and AAU coaches and high school coaches and friends of their AAU coaches." That isn't completely different from his world in 2017, when he was a first-time head coach after a successful seven-year stint as a Wisconsin assistant.
The 47-year-old can hearken back to those days for some experience, but only to a degree.
"The days have been pretty similar in terms of literally not being able to squeeze enough hours into the day," Paris said. "There is another component here of media attention and booster activity that you have to do. It's not necessarily about performing your job, and there are just more of those things here at this level compared to when I first got to Chattanooga."
During his introductory news conference March 24 in Columbia, Paris was asked why he wasn't on Twitter. He is on that social media platform now with more than 11,000 followers, and his most recent tweet was a photo of him Monday standing in Colonial Life Arena while holding a gamecock.
"Animals that I'm not sure are domesticated and animals that are small enough to be intimidated or feel threatened by your size - I don't trust them, because they can do anything," Paris said. "Their natural instinct is to fight, and I didn't want to get clawed or scraped in the face or pecked. I was a little nervous, I have to admit."
Paris is quick to admit that building South Carolina's 2022-23 roster is his biggest task at hand and that today's landscape makes that more and more challenging. After his first UTC squad struggled through a 10-23 season, Paris signed forward Kevin Easley out of Indianapolis, who averaged 14.2 points and was the Southern Conference freshman of the year but then bolted for TCU, where he spent two years before transferring again to Duquesne.
Fortunately for Paris, he had David Jean-Baptiste for his entire run in Chattanooga and landed Wright State transfer Malachi Smith, who declared for the NBA draft last year before returning and declared again Tuesday.
The SEC personnel landscape is changing by the minute, with Tennessee point guard Kennedy Chandler and Auburn's inside tandem of Jabari Smith and Walker Kessler also entering the NBA draft pool. LSU had 11 players enter the transfer portal and two declare for the NBA after the firing of Will Wade - another former Mocs coach - and Paris is going into this process knowing there will be at least a 50% turnover from Frank Martin's 10th and final Gamecocks team that finished 18-13.
"We won't have as much to fill as LSU, but we'll have a lot of roster spots to fill," Paris said. "You're going to lose three players who have eligibility remaining these days no matter how good your coach is. Maybe they didn't play enough or they're further away from home than they want to be, or maybe they averaged 16 in the SoCon and they feel like that gets them a scholarship in the SEC.
"You're going to have three of those, period, and when you have a coaching change, that number is going to double. It is what it is today, and you either adapt to it, or you can't be a basketball coach."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.