South Carolina and Chattanooga coach Lamont Paris has signed a five-year contract to become the school’s next head coach in men’s basketball, sources told ESPN on Monday.
The deal still requires formal board approval later this week.
Paris spent five seasons with Chattanooga, going 87-72 during that time. After struggling with his team in 2018 and ’19, Paris has gone 65-29 over the past three seasons. The Mocs went 27-8 this season, winning the regular season Southern Conference title and the SoCon conference tournament title.
In the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Chattanooga led Illinois with 4 seeds until the last minute before falling 54–53.
Prior to taking over Chattanooga, Paris was an assistant coach at Wisconsin for seven seasons, giving him high-level hiring experience. He also worked as an assistant at Akron and at three non-Division I schools: IUP, DePauw and Wooster, where he played varsity ball.
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Paris will replace Frank Martin, who was fired last week after 10 seasons at Columbia. Martin has made just one NCAA Tournament appearance during his time in South Carolina, but that trip to the 2017 tournament saw the Gamecocks make their first Final Four appearance. Martin posted a 171–147 overall record in South Carolina, including 18–13 this season and 9–9 in the SEC.
One of the attractive qualities for South Carolina officials was Paris’ experience in recruiting, evaluating, and developing big players in Wisconsin. While in Paris at Madison under Beau Ryan and Greg Gard from 2010 to 2017, Wisconsin reached a pair of Final Fours (2014 and 2015) and played for the 2015 national title.
Wisconsin averaged 27 games a year during his seven seasons there, and Paris played a key role in both recruiting and developing some of the Badgers’ key players of the era: Frank Kaminsky, Sam Dekker, Nigel Hayes, Bronson Koenig and Ethan Happ. .
In Chattanooga, he demonstrated the ability to build a top-notch squad, as his best players included transfers Malachi Smith (Right State), Silvio De Souza (Kansas) and Josh Ayeney (South Alabama/St. Bonaventure). Paris hired fifth-year senior David Jean-Baptiste, who delivered the 30-foot buzzer that won the Southern Conference Championship and submitted Chattanooga’s NCAA tournament bid for the first time since 2016.