Lamont Paris shouts out Frank Martin, previous South Carolina staff

Lamont Paris said he’d try to keep his list of thank-you’s short as he was introduced as South Carolina’s next men’s basketball coach.

But he started where things had just ended for the Gamecocks. Before mentioning his new boss, or even family, he mentioned Frank Martin.

“I’d like to thank Frank Martin and his staff for the work that they had done here,” Paris said, “putting this program in the state that it is now and with so much optimism to move forward.”

The program Martin left is hardly in shambles. The Gamecocks have been below .500 once in the past eight season. Two of the past three years, the team finished 18-13.

But the program had not made the NCAA tournament since the 2017 Final Four. Martin finished with a 171–147 record across 10 seasons.

Paris is coming off a stint that saw him build Chattanooga into a feisty tournament squad, one that pushed Big Ten champion Illinois to the limit in this year’s NCAA first round. (Paris mentioned being sore his team had led for the first 39:35 of the one-point loss.)

Paris did note that he might be a different guy than Martin, and some of the holdover players might end up moving on. That’s almost standard in the modern basketball landscape, with the transfer portal offering easy transitions.

“Some guys are just going to not like it,” Paris said. “They’re not going to like me, period, just because I’m a new guy. I’m not the guy that recruited him. That happens sometimes.

“And then some guys are going to get a chance to know me and they’re going to say, ‘Whoa, this is a fresh start. I think I could really thrive in this in this guy’s system.’ ”

And Martin himself might have a new job soon enough. Multiple outlets reported Thursday afternoon that Martin had been offered by UMass to be the program’s next head coach.

Martin started his college coaching career in Massachusetts at Northeastern. He would replace Matt McCall, who spent five seasons with the Minutemen and was actually Paris’ predecessor at Chattanooga.