While Dawn Staley is leading the South Carolina women’s basketball team towards another NCAA Tournament championship, the men’s team has been fading.
Hopefully that changes after today.
The Gamecocks announced that they hired Lamont Paris as the new head coach of their men’s basketball team.
Paris arrives from Chattanooga, where he coached the Mocs to an 87-71 record over his five seasons. This year his season ended with a first-round loss to Illinois in the NCAA Tournament. It was the first appearance in the tournament for the Mocs, the regular and postseason SoCon conference champs, since 2016.
Paris developed a program that started 10-23 in his first year to a team that went 27-8 this past season.
That’s the type of coaching South Carolina desperately needs as the program floundered under former coach Frank Martin after making the Final Four in in the 2016-17 season. This past season the Gamecocks finished at 18-13 and failed to make the Tournament.
Paris becomes the first Black head coach in the history of the South Carolina men’s basketball program and now both the men’s and women’s programs have Black talent leading the way.
Hopefully Lamont Paris has the same success as Dawn Staley.
