South Carolina closes book on season. Gamecocks hope it’s a preview of what’s to come

Myles Stute held his head in his hands, the March Madness logo on his towel obstructing a chance to look. There wasn’t anything he could do with three minutes left on the clock.

Three minutes left in the season.

BJ Mack had fouled out. His final collegiate game ended with him watching the clock hit zero from the bench at PPG Paints Arena. Ta’Lon Cooper was on the court, watching Oregon’s Jadrain Tracey dribble the ball in front of him while the clock winded down.

Lamont Paris stood with his arms crossed, facing his coaching staff. It was a hard way for the season to end: a double-digit upset in the program’s first NCAA Tournament appearance in seven years.

Final score: Oregon 87, South Carolina 73.

It wasn’t how they wanted to end the season, but this year’s South Carolina team rerouted the program’s trajectory.

“Having been around some other teams that have done this, it’s not the basketball component of it that allows you to do this,” Paris said. “It ends up being these other things that ultimately manifest themselves in a basketball game. It has very little to do with how fast our guys run or how high they jump or the passing or shooting. It has very little to do with that and certainly isn’t because I have some magic play.

“It always starts from within, and this group had all those characteristics and then some.”

Bruises heal. Scars fade after a while. Change doesn’t happen overnight.

Take a moment to recognize where South Carolina landed — back in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2017. No one outside the 15 players and coaching staff had any expectations for this team. The Gamecocks battled back while appearing to simply say, “Just watch us.”

They did that in November, voted last in the SEC preseason poll with no All-SEC preseason team members. They did it again and again and again.

“I’m going to remember stuff like that,” Meechie Johnson said. “Just being able to bounce back and not hold yourself in a place where it can be tough to do that, and honestly, to be able to do that with this group of guys.”

The idea of closing the book on the 2023-24 men’s basketball season doesn’t have to sit right. There were games left on the table, opportunities USC could’ve taken advantage of — starting with Thursday’s matchup against Oregon.

But it means there’s already a bit of bulletin board material for next year.

“They have a lot of confidence,” Cooper said about his now-former teammates. “If they don’t, they’re going to hear it from me next year. So I hope they keep it up.”

The Gamecocks can, and will, evolve over the next seven months. New players will come in from the transfer portal, and South Carolina might lose some players as well. Two incoming freshmen, Trent Noah and Okku Federiko, are champing at the bit to get to college.

Paris isn’t going anywhere. South Carolina will keep its quarter-zip-loving head coach, who laid the foundation in this unprecedented year. He’ll give credit to the players on the court, but he brought them to Columbia and believed in them.

Without Paris, this season might have never happened.

“Just to come into a situation where he really believed in me,” Stute said. “Coach Paris coming to me with the vision when I was in the transfer portal, it looked exactly like this.”

Remember how much Johnson smiled during this season? How proud fans were to wear quarter-zips to Colonial Life Arena? Those are the moments USC can remember the 2023-24 year by — not the final 40 minutes.

It meant the return of South Carolina men’s basketball on a national level. Those 15 players and a second-year coaching staff did that.

“Winning with everyone, sharing the moment on the court, running out at CLA,” Johnson said. “I feel like it was such a pleasure to do that with everybody.”

In the end, it’s possible this year is just a preview of what Paris has in store in the coming years leading the Gamecocks.

“I love who I work with, and there was a lot of speculation about a lot of other things that were out there. And so it’s no accident that I ended up right back where I am,” Paris said, “and hopefully it displays the level of belief that I have in not only what we’re doing as a staff, but just in who we’re around every day and what I believe that looks like moving forward.”