Late last night, many national outlets confirmed that South Carolina is reportedly hiring UT Chattanooga coach Lamont Paris to fill its MBB coaching position. After a coaching search that had many twists and turns over the course of a week (don't worry that article is coming soon too), South Carolina finally found their guy on Monday. The deal still requires formal BOT approval, but it is more or less a done deal. The hire is historically notable as Paris becomes the first African-American coach to lead a revenue Men's sports program for the University of South Carolina. He took over UT-Chatanooga in 2017-18 and has compiled an 87–70 (.554) record in 5 seasons with the program. Over the last 3 seasons, Paris and the Mocs were 65-27 (.706). Let's take a look at who Lamont Paris is, what his coaching career has been like thus far, what strengths he brings to the Gamecock program, as well as what questions remain for him to answer once he arrives.

Lamont Paris knows the game of basketball from every angle. He spent his collegiate career at The College of Wooster in Ohio, where he was a team captain and All-North Coast Conference selection his Junior and Senior seasons. He followed that up by joining the staff at Wooster as an assistant when his playing career ended in 1997. He saw stops as an assistant at DePauw, IUP, Akron, and then landed as an assistant for Bo Ryan's Wisconsin program in 2010. There, Paris is credited with being a crucial part of recruiting stars like Frank Kaminsky, Sam Dekker, Nigel Hayes, Bronson Koenig, and Ethan Happ. After Greg Gard took over the Wisconsin program, he also credited Paris as being a key part of helping him in his transition to being a head coach with the elite program. He took what he learned at Wisconsin, and took over the UT Chattanooga program in 2017, replacing Matt McCall who went to UMass. If you strictly look at his record, you're missing a lot of the story. UT Chattanooga was one of the youngest teams in the country his first two years, including the #1 youngest roster his first season, after graduating and transfers caused a lot of attrition in the wake of McCall leaving for UMass. Paris then turned the program slowly around, winning more games each season than the previous year: His winning percentage went from 30% to 38%, to 61%, 69%, and finally, 77% this past year, which culminated in a SoCon regular season and tournament championship and an NCAA Tournament berth. The Mocs were ultimately eliminated in the first round after nearly knocking off the number 4-seeded Illinois Illini before ultimately losing 54-53.

The first thing Gamecocks might be excited to know is that Paris' Chattanooga teams usually performed pretty well on offense, something that has maligned South Carolina sports programs across the board as of late. This past season, Chattanooga ranked 34th in offensive efficiency, while the Gamecocks sat all the way back at 291st. Also, as Coach Shane Beamer has shown with the football program, one way to turn a program around quickly is by hitting the transfer portal hard, which seems to be a strength of Coach Paris. Some of his best players at Chattanooga were transfers, including Silvio De Sousa (Kansas), Josh Ayeni (South Alabama/St. Bonaventure, and Malachi Smith (Wright State). As I mentioned, he also is credited with being an important factor in several key recruits for Wisconsin in his time there. Paris will have to get to work quickly, with many key recruits in the state of South Carolina over the next two classes. The question will also be can he convince some key players from the 2021-22 Gamecock squad to stick around, notably Freshman PG Devin Carter.

After his SoCon tournament win, Paris gave a little glimpse of how he envisions building a program when he said, "The right kids, the right culture, getting the city into it, the community on top of it. If you get all those things, nets can’t help but happen at some point. That’s what my vision was, and we got the right people on the boat in order to make it happen.” Now we will see if he can create that same culture in Columbia, SC, at a basketball program that has struggled to have any sustained success since the Frank McGuire era over 40 years ago. Though the fanbase seems split on the hire, at this point the best thing to do is get behind the young coach and hope that his turnaround at UT Chattanooga doesn't prove to just be "lightning in a bottle."

We'll have more to come soon.