What Lamont Paris said after USC MBB falls in rematch against No. 12 Florida

South Carolina men’s basketball traveled to Gainesville on Tuesday for its second game of the season against the defending national champion Florida Gators, hoping to avenge a 47-point loss at home on Jan. 28

USC dropped the rematch 76-62 to fall to 11-15 on the year and 2-11 in the SEC. It was the eighth-straight loss for the Gamecocks dating back to Jan. 24. While the final result was the same, the 14-point margin of defeat points to a better overall showing from USC against the No. 12 Gators.

Here’s how Gamecock coach Lamont Paris reacted to the loss:

Opening statement

After lamenting over his team’s lack of fight in the first bout against Florida, Paris was much more complimentary of USC’s efforts following Tuesday’s loss, while also tipping his cap to Florida coach Todd Golden’s group.

“Thought we did a good job in some areas. Our half-court defense was pretty solid at times, between second-chance points and transition points, that was the vast majority of their offense was, or a big portion of what their offense was. That’s probably some of those long possessions, which they don’t have a lot of long possessions offensively, they probably had more long possessions with some of the effort in what we were doing defensively at times,” Paris said. “I thought we did a good job. Some of that put us in bad position for rebounding, to get the initial attacks stopped. They’re also good at offensive rebounding, and then it’s also very, very physical, so it’s a very difficult situation to consistently officiate those situations.

“They’ve got a good team and a competitive team. A very competitive team. As you look what’s most important in college landscape today, how competitive guys are, competitive spirit, I think, ends up winning today. And in this stretch that’s really been, from afar, what’s fueled them.”

Wipe the slate clean

USC’s 95-48 loss to Florida last time out marked the worst loss for the Gamecocks under Paris.

Paris said his team certainly evaluated what happened in the loss, but ultimately tried taking Tuesday’s game as a chance to start fresh and try again.

“It was a conglomeration of so many different things happening. They were better than us. They also played better than us. Those are two different things. ... It got to a certain point where our fight wasn’t where it needed to be,” Paris said of the last outing against Florida. “There were, again, some things that we did that I thought were good. It’s actually why we started the game with the same game plan defensively in this game, which I thought we ultimately did a good job of again. We look at changing 150 things when the game comes out that way, and you got to sift through all the noise and nonsense and the fluff that’s out there in that game and see what did the real game look like. And so we did. We went back to a couple of things that we thought were good for us, but honestly, this is just a new game, different day.”

Motivating through struggles

Paris was asked about how he framed the messaging from the previous loss to Florida to his players. He said that he was honest with his team about where they were at, but said he feels like doing too much comparison or hammering home a loss isn’t what most modern players respond to.

That sparked a follow-up question about how he motivates a new generation of players through a seven-game losing streak.

“I think it’s hard for anybody to struggle in life. I think the older you get it gets easier. But these are young guys, and they’ve got a lot of things going on, and they’ve got a lot of successes in life. Most all at this level have been successful in high school. They’ve been successful in AAU. They’ve been successful at other schools, some of them. And so handling challenges is a thing that they’re not that familiar with,” Paris said. “Honestly, as a coach, one of your biggest responsibilities is to help them move forward in life, handling adversity and challenges. We focus on that.

“But I think they’ve been good. Their energy and their spirit has been really good. ... Their spirit energy has been really good, to continue to play and fight, and they want to win. They look in the mirror and say, ‘How can I do this? And how can I get better at that?’ And they handle the coaching, especially for kids in 2026, they do handle coaching, which involves criticism. You’ve got to fluff it up a little bit, you can’t deliberate the same exact way you did in 1985, but they’ve done a really good job with that.”

Who plays when?

Paris has been trying different lineups and distributing his minutes to more players as USC’s losing streak rolls along. The prime example against Florida was Christ Essandoko. The Providence transfer played for the first time since Feb. 3 against the Gators, finishing with six points and three rebounds in 14 minutes.

When it comes to changing around lineups, Paris said it ultimately is decided by who shows the most in practice.

“Practice matters. I think the reps at practice matter. We do some stuff. We stat. We’ve done the plus-minus. We do the other one, where a missed field goal is worth minus one ... all those things. But at the end of the day, the guys that are having the biggest effect on winning, the guys are the most consistent. Consistency matters,” Paris said. “That’s why we do end up playing a lot of guys, because we still have some guys still searching for what consistency looks like. Typically, it’s what I see at practice. Games matter, too, obviously, but what I see at practice, your practice habits and efforts, there’s a lot of mobility based on what you’re doing at practice. It’s not a club for us and practice really, really matters.”

This story was originally published February 17, 2026 at 10:14 PM.