After a year of watching and waiting, it will finally be time.
South Carolina men’s basketball’s Arden Conyers will take the court this season after redshirting his entire freshman season a year ago, watching along as the Gamecocks tied the school record for wins in a season with 26, and as his fellow true freshman Collin Murray-Boyles became an impact starter.
But although Conyers was not playing, the year off to transition into college ball was highly beneficial.
“I’m really excited for him to be in the mix after going through a redshirt year,” Lamont Paris said. “His redshirt year was extremely productive. I anticipate him having a great chance to play a significant role for us.”
Conyers is listed at 6-foot-7, 210 lbs on South Carolina’s official roster, and is still just 19-years-old. The offensive ability was clearly there in high school when scored over 1,000 points in his career and averaged 21.4 points per game in his senior season. He will enter a team needing to replace some scoring after losing Ta’Lon Cooper and Meechie Johnson from last year’s back court, giving him a chance to contribute right away.
But with a full four years of eligibility remaining, Paris and the staff want to play the long game with the Blythewood, S.C. native as much as just thinking about the 2024-25 campaign.
“I said this about a year ago when people asked me about our plan,” Paris explained. “I would always say, ‘You’ve never heard of Arden Conyers. You don’t know him if you’re outside the city of Columbia or certainly the state of South Carolina, you’ve probably never heard of him.’ But my anticipation was with some of the things that we had seen, that in two years anybody who was following SEC basketball would be saying his name a lot. And he hasn’t disappointed.”
Right now, almost everyone in the college basketball world would fall into the latter camp. Conyers still has not played in an actual game, and few outside the Gamecock sphere know about him. It is easy to lose him in the shuffle of a young team with Murray-Boyles already getting NBA Draft Lottery buzz and incoming freshman Cam Scott joining the fold.
But for the select few who have seen the skillset — and the growth — over the last year, Conyers is poised to carve out a role for himself on a team which will need someone to step up. What exactly does it look like when Conyers is rolling well?
To Paris, it means a little bit of everything.
“He’s a very versatile guy,” Paris said. “He’s shown some signs of explosiveness from an athletic standpoint. He’s still, he can make shots, he’s got good size, he’s very versatile.
“His offensive package is a good one. He’s got some real tools offensively. He’s still trying to learn some things defensively.”
Although he is not technically new to the roster, Conyers will be one of several players to represent the program for the first time this season. Scott joins Okku Federiko in the 2024 recruiting class along with transfers Jamarii Thomas, Nick Pringle and Jordan Butler.
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