Lamont Paris Discusses Defensive Adjustment That Turned The Tide Vs. No. 24 Florida

South Carolina's men's basketball team had their backs against the wall in the second half versus Florida, until one defensive change was made by Lamont Paris.

With around 11 minutes and 29 seconds to go in a ranked battle against the No. 24 Florida Gators, Lamont Paris and the South Carolina Gamecocks found themselves down seven points with their opponent set to go to the free-throw line coming out of the media timeout. Carolina hadn't held the lead since the 3:09 mark in the first half, and although they had stayed within striking distance in the second half, the Gators had done a tremendous job of keeping the home crowd at bay by stonewalling any momentum-building opportunities that the Gamecocks had created for themselves.

With the scouting report from Eddie Shannon noting that the Gators had allowed multiple mini-comebacks due to their offensive struggles against other zone defenses, Coach Paris felt that it was what his team needed to retake control of the game.

"[Florida] had been so effective off the ball screen in a variety of ways - they got some good mid-range scorers; those guys are good," Lamont lamented. "Ultimately, the main decision in going to it was I pumped faked two times in the timeouts leading up to [the change] just to get the guys going, cause sometimes it's a lot of effort to deal with the 1-3-1 and I just kept telling them 'Guys, I don't wanna [run] the 1-3-1, but I'll give ya another couple minutes here, and we may have to go to it,'" and so we ultimately did."

Lamont Paris makes a signal to his team in their matchup versus the LSU Tigers (17th Feb., 2024) / Jeff Blake | USA Today Network

That one decision wound up making the most significant difference in the contest, as Florida shot just 50 percent over twelve shots for the rest of the afternoon, but that percentage was mainly due to the herculean effort of guard Walter Clayton Jr., who became extremely hesitant with his decision-making process, and had four turnovers by himself in the final eleven minutes.

The strategy aligns with Paris' general defensive philosophy: don't beat yourselves and put the onus of the end result on your man.

"I wanted to create some indecision in the ball-screens or minimize the number of ball screens that [Florida] would set. [The guys] had some built-in help to absorb the aggressive drivers."

The move not only played a crucial component in today's win over the Gators but also kept South Carolina's dreams of winning a share of the SEC regular season title and securing a double-bye in the conference tournament alive. Those hopes and dreams will hang in the balance again next Wednesday against the Tennessee Volunteers.

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