What Lamont Paris said after South Carolina’s SEC loss to Vandy

South Carolina men’s basketball dropped its SEC opener 83-71 to No. 11 Vanderbilt on Saturday at Colonial Life Arena.

The Gamecocks (9-5, 0-1 SEC) struggled on both ends of the ball, shooting 25% on 3-pointers and allowing five Vanderbilt (14-0, 1-0 SEC) players to reach double-digit points despite the Commodores missing leading scorer Duke Miles.

Here’s what USC head coach Lamont Paris had to say about USC’s conference-opening defeat:

Opening statement

Paris started his postgame press conference by pointing out what he thought was the biggest reason for the loss: USC’s lack of aggression relative to Vanderbilt.

“I think that game, for our guys, hopefully was a lesson in what aggression really looks like. Aggressive manner of play when you attack the rim. We did attack some, we needed to, you have to. The way they play makes you attack some. But as the finish was taking place, theirs involved more contact, more friction, and because they were initiating it, they were also prepared for it and expected it, and then were rewarded by that as well as free throws. In ours, we’re finesseful,” Paris said. “Aggressive doesn’t just mean willingness to shoot the ball makes me an aggressive player. I’m talking about aggressive moves, aggressive attacks. And so I thought that they did a good job of that, and we did not do a great job of that. That was the thing that stood out the most to me. It’s just a decision guys are going to have to make. We’ll try some things to simulate that, but it’s just a decision guys are going to have to make. When you attack, they’re going to be aggressive like that. They’re aggressive defensively and reaching and all that kind of stuff. And if you’re going to do that, you’re going to have to pay the price, because we’re going to attack aggressively off the dribble. And so I thought that was really my biggest takeaway in terms of how the game played out.”

Screen defense

One area where USC has struggled this season and Vanderbilt took advantage of Saturday is defending ball screens. The Commodores were able to score 32 points in the pain and shoot 50.9% from the floor, largely due to driving with ease off of screens.

Paris said they tried something different in that area tonight, and solving the issue is something that will likely take more trial and error.

“Our ball screen coverage in this game was a little softer. We do an aggressive ball screen coverage too. But you know, when we do that, we get in rotations a lot, and I wanted to stay out of rotations with the way [Tyler] Nickel has been shooting the ball and all, they’ve got a lot of guys that have been shooting the ball well,” Paris said. “This isn’t a world of extremes. This is what can happen … like we could come out in the LSU game and give up eight points in the paint the whole game. And that probably doesn’t mean that we have it solved. Sometimes a guy gets a feel for what you’re doing, and he’s better at getting it in there. It’s why there’s a variety of different ball screen coverages and ways to defend.”

Settling for 3s

At USC’s media availability Friday prior to Saturday’s game, Paris mentioned the team had done a deep-dive on its 3-point attempts this season and found the shot quality was good despite the Gamecocks shooting only 31.2% on 3s this season.

That shot quality seemed to diminish against Vanderbilt as USC shot just 25% from beyond the arc, but the Gamecocks still attempted 28 3-pointers Saturday and 30 non-threes despite shooting 60% on the latter attempts. Paris said he feels his team’s outside shooting is the reason its 2-pointers are so efficient.

“Our two point field goals, oftentimes, are a byproduct of the fact that we do have multiple guys that can shoot 3s. We had eight guys made a three in the last game, right? And that’s been a part of what’s allowed us to play well at times. Doesn’t go that way when you don’t make the threes necessarily, but just the propensity to shoot them also makes people cover you a certain way,” Paris said.

Paris did admit that he still felt like his team settled for 3s at times during Saturday’s loss.

“There was probably five shots in this game that I’d like to have back. And I think those guys would like to have them back too, not because they didn’t go in, but because they decided to shoot that shot,” Paris said. “We’ve shown that we can make threes at a high level. So people’s DNA is their DNA. Again, I think we were discouraged because they were physical and handsy, as we tried to drive, and we were discouraged by it, and so we did. We did settle.”

Looking ahead

With the conference opener out of the way, USC’s remaining 17 games are ranked the strongest remaining schedule in the nation by ESPN. But Paris said he tries not to read too much into the switch from non-conference games to SEC foes.

“I’m not surprised by it. It was on our schedule. This is the day that they told us we would play our SEC opener. So it came, and we did that, right? You have 32 games, and 18 of them are going to be in the league,” he said. “For us, it’s another game, and we’ve got to get ready and until it’s made to be something other than that. … It’s why I’m very mundane with my answers when they asked me about what the difference of SEC play is, other than the general quality of the opponent overall.”