South Carolina Basketball: Paris Faces Pressure Amid Slump

0:00On March 3rd, South Carolina men's basketball has a storied past anchored by Coach Frank McGuire, who racked up 283 wins over. 16 seasons with a winning percentage of 666, the best in program history since 1908. Fast forward, and Lamont Perez brought fresh hope in his second year, with 26 wins, tying a school record and earning an NCAA tournament birth. Their first since the 2017 Final Four. That success earned Perez an SEC coach of the year nod and a contract extension right before the postseason. But things quickly soured with a 31-point SEC tournament lost to Auburn, followed by an NCAA exit to Oregon just six days later. Since then, the game cocks have stumbled hard, posting a 24 and 37 record overall and just 5 and 29 against SEC foes. Over the last season and a half, Perez sits at 61 and 66 in his three plus years, with three losing seasons already mirroring coaches like Darren Horn and others who got the boot after similar slumps.

1:04This season finds them at 12 and 17, 3 and 13 in the league, plagued by blowout losses including 3 by 20 or more points. With a contract through 2030 paying up to five million dollar annually, firing Perez now would cost around $12 million in buy-out. Money. As they head into senior night against Tennessee, the pressure mounts on Paris to turn things around amid one of the program's roughest stretches in. in decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades, decades,