South Carolina MBB job ranked last in SEC in anonymous poll of league coaches

This season has been a reality check for South Carolina men’s basketball.

Going into his fourth season as USC’s head coach — and in his second season removed from an NCAA Tournament bid in 2023-24 — Lamont Paris brought in 12 newcomers and hoped for a quick turnaround from a 2024-25 team that won just two SEC games.

A few months later, and the plan just hasn’t worked. USC has yet to pass last year’s conference win total with seven games to go. The Gamecocks are only projected to win one of those games by ESPN Analytics — a home matchup against Mississippi State. It’s safe to say it’s been a difficult season.

Any USC fans starting to think of a potential leadership change were also dealt a reality check Wednesday, as On3 Sports and Field of 64 analyst Jeff Goodman released the results of an anonymous poll where 16 coaches and assistants from the SEC ranked their conference’s head jobs from best to worst.

South Carolina was voted last, receiving 24 points. The next-lowest school was Mississippi State with 32 points. Kentucky led the poll with 256 points and received all 16 first-place votes.

“There are no specific parameters,” Goodman wrote. ”Each coach was able to utilize their own specific parameters to determine their list from top to bottom.”

Why last?

Goodman wasn’t cruel enough to include quotes from the coaches on why the bad jobs are bad, but what they said about the best jobs in the SEC leaves clues.

“It’s the best job in the league and maybe the best in the country. They have the resources, fan support and obviously the money. I’d take that job over any in college basketball,” one coach told Goodman about Kentucky, the poll’s unanimous first-place winner. “There are so many football schools in the league. Kentucky is really the only clear-cut basketball school. Plus, they had $20 million, their fans are always locked in, and the administration has no choice but to support basketball at the highest level.”

Kentucky, perhaps the only SEC school that will ever focus more on basketball than football, is in a unique situation. Arkansas, meanwhile, got high marks because “they care about basketball, have an incredibly passionate fan base and have a ton of money.”

All the top jobs shared some or all of the other qualities listed: financial resources, fan support and a consistent standard of basketball success.

So where does South Carolina men’s basketball stack up with those elements?

Gamecock supporters have proven they’ll show up when the team is more competitive. Attendance is down at Colonial Life Arena this season. Officially, South Carolina is averaging 10,835 fans per game, a measure that reflects tickets sold. That compares with 11,926 a season ago and with 13,397 per game in the Gamecocks’ most recent NCAA Tournament season (2023-24).

Patrick O’Rourke, a Washington, D.C.-based CPA who runs a comprehensive NIL and revenue share database at nil-ncaa.com, told The State in October he estimates USC’s roster budget to have been about $4.5 million this season, an increase for the program but still toward the bottom of the league. That’s compared with the tens of millions that the highest-paid rosters in the conference demand.

And though there’ve been some program highs — the Frank McGuire years, the Frank Martin Final Four team and the respective runs under Eddie Fogler and Dave Odom — historical success hasn’t always been consistent for the Gamecocks.

In the 42 seasons since the NCAA expanded to a 64-team postseason bracket, USC has made the big dance six times. That’s an average of one tournament bid every seven seasons.