Dawn Staley on Lamont Paris: ‘He’s the ultimate competitor’

South Carolina‘s women’s basketball team just finished an undefeated regular season and an SEC Tournament championship, but the men’s basketball team has taken some of their spotlight thanks to the stellar season Lamont Paris’ squad is currently having.

There’s no hard feelings from women’s head coach Dawn Staley, who made an appearance in Nashville to support her Gamecock counterparts during their opening SEC Tournament matchup against Arkansas on Thursday. She had high praise for the men’s basketball head coach when speaking to Marty Smith.

“Lamont [Paris] is cool, calm and collected. He’s the ultimate competitor,” Staley said. “You see that those guys, they’ve got great chemistry. And as you can see, it requires that to get the amount of wins that they’re getting. Kudos to Lamont for taking it to [Athletic Director Ray] Tanner’s wallet.”

Ahead of Thursday’s matchup, ESPN reported that the Gamecocks will extend Paris, the 2023-24 SEC Coach of the Year, through the 2029-30 season. South Carolina will pay Paris an average of more than $4 million annually and is pending board approval that is set to be decided on Friday. GamecockCentral later confirmed the news.

The turnaround from his first season in Columbia to now is night and day, and is deserving of this kind of paycheck.

Under Paris, the Gamecocks finished 11-21 during his first season in charge, which included a 4-14 mark in conference play. Based on that, South Carolina was picked to finish last in the SEC during the preseason media poll. They blew that expectation out of the water this year as the squad improved to 25-6 overall and finished tied for second place in the SEC with a 13-5 league record.

Despite this, South Carolina finished as the five-seed in the SEC Tournament this week, which means they have to play one extra game to find themselves in the quarterfinals. They went on to dominate the Razorbacks 80-66 and will advance to face four-seed Auburn in Nashville on Friday.

Of course, the last time these two teams faced each other was on Feb. 14 where the Gamecocks were outpaced 101-61 inside Neville Arena. There’s a chip on the Gamecocks’ shoulder to earn that win back, and there’s added motivation this time as the winner will move on to play either Mississippi State or top-seeded Tennessee in the SEC Tournament semifinals.

Tip-off between the Gamecocks and Tigers is scheduled for Friday at 3:30 p.m. ET live on ESPN.

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