South Carolina basketball looks to get on track after a rough two-year stretch under head coach Lamont Paris.
The tradition continues! It’s another year of our countdown of the top 100 preseason teams in college basketball until the start of the season. Each day, we will reveal the next team until we reach the team slotted at number one. Up next: South Carolina basketball.
South Carolina basketball has, to put it lightly, not been all that great recently. After a historic 2023-24 season, the Gamecocks are 25-39 over the past two seasons, including a dreadful 6-30 mark in SEC games. That’s after a 13-5 in-conference record in 2024. But perhaps a change of pace will be beneficial in Columbia: only two scholarship players return from last year after Lamont Paris underwent a complete retooling of the Gamecocks roster. For a tournament team, losing the starting five seems like a death knell, but for a team that failed to beat a single team that made the tournament, it might be just what the doctor ordered.
The Gamecocks did bring in some talent from the portal, notably Kory Mincy from George Mason to replace Meechie Johnson at the point. Meechie’s cousin, Marcus, will likely back up Mincy at point as the Gamecocks’ lone rated freshman recruit. Gone is jack-of-all-trades shooting guard Kobe Knox, and in his stead will be former high-four-star Alabama recruit Davion Hannah, who has plenty of potential but failed to find a proper niche last season with the Crimson Tide as a freshman.
Moving to the wings, Drexel transfer Shane Blakeney and Texas transfer Cam Heide will likely be at the three and four, respectively. Blakeney is a South Carolina native who started every game for the Dragons last season and was named 2025-26 All-CAA. Heide is a bit small for a power forward and will likely be used as a floor-stretcher with a dead-eye shot from behind the arc. Heide shot 45.4% from deep last season with the Longhorns in 22.5 minutes per game.
Returnees Grant Polk and Hayden Assemian also add to the wing situation from the bench. Polk started hot last season from beyond the arc before cooling off spectacularly, shooting 2-for-27 (7.4%) from three in the months of January and February. If Polk can rediscover his talents, there’s loads of potential to be had. Assemian is a willing and able rebounder who showed grit at times last season even when all hope seemed lost. Though he’s not much of a threat from outside of the paint, Assemian is certainly physically able to compete with any SEC frontcourt player. Spanish addition Hugo López will provide more depth after competing for CB Estudiantes in Madrid.
At the center position, three talented pieces will vie for playing time after the position was a bit of a weak spot last season for the Gamecocks. Likely starters will be either Juan Fernández, a 6’11” Argentinian who played the last two seasons for Bàsquet Girona in Spain’s Liga ACB, or Aleksas Bieliauskas, a Wisconsin transfer with a penchant for making threes. Regardless of who starts, both will have plenty of opportunities to see the court. Backing them up will be Jakub Nečas, a transfer from Duquesne who averaged 6.9 points per game and 5.1 rebounds per game last season with the Dukes.
Welcome to the 1000-piece puzzle that is SEC basketball. When nobody has any idea what to expect, why not expect the unexpected? South Carolina has been picked last in the SEC two of the past three seasons, and they’ve finished 2nd and 14th in those years. They’ll likely be picked last again this year, but South Carolina basketball has the front-end talent to challenge for higher. As long as the injury bug stays away from Columbia and all five projected starters stay available, the Gamecocks can make some noise.
Head coach: Lamont Paris (5th season at South Carolina, 10th season overall)
2025-26 record: 13-19 (4-14)
2025-26 postseason finish: No tournament
Notable departures:
- EVERYONE besides Hayden Assemian and Grant Polk
Notable non-conference games:
- at NC State (Dec. 1)
- vs. Maryland (Dec. 19) – Baltimore
Projected Rotation
PG: Kory Mincy (6-1, 185, Sr.)
2025-26 stats: 14.3 PPG, 3.6 RPG, 2.9 APG, 1.1 SPG, 88.7 FT% (George Mason)
SG: Davion Hannah (6-6, 190, So.)
2025-26 stats: 3.3 PPG, 1.9 RPG, 0.8 APG, 36.4 3P%, 10 games played (Alabama)
SF: Shane Blakeney (6-5, 197, Gr.)
2025-26 stats: 14.2 PPG, 5.1 RPG, 2.5 APG, 35.9 3P%, 1.1 SPG (Drexel)
PF: Camden Heide (6-7, 215, Sr.)
2025-26 stats: 5.9 PPG, 2.7 RPG, 0.7 APG, 45.4 3P% (Texas)
C: Juan Fernández (6-11, 220, Sr.)
2025-26 stats: 7.7 PPG, 4.4 RPG, 1.1 APG (Bàsquet Girona – Liga ACB)
6: Aleksas Bieliauskas (6-11, 250, So.)
2025-26 stats: 4.9 PPG, 4.4 RPG, 0.9 APG, 1.6 BPG, 34.6 3P% (Wisconsin)
7: Marcus Johnson (6-2, 185, Fr.)
247Sports Composite No. 82 ranked recruit
8: Hugo López (6-9, 210, Sr.)
2025-26 stats: 2.7 PPG, 3.5 RPG, 56.4 FG%, 10.9 MPG (CB Estudiantes – Liga ACB)
9: Hayden Assemian (6-6, 228, So.)
2025-26 stats: 2.4 PPG, 2.5 RPG, 0.3 APG, 9.8 MPG
10: Jakub Nečas (6-10, 240, Sr.)
2025-26 stats: 6.9 PPG, 5.1 RPG, 1.1 APG, 36.4 3P% (Duquesne)
11: Grant Polk (6-6, 200, So.)
2025-26 stats: 3.8 PPG, 1.1 RPG, 0.1 APG, 12.9 MPG
South Carolina Basketball team MVP: Kory Mincy
Mincy might be the shortest player on the South Carolina basketball roster, but he has a good argument for being the most talented as well. Beginning his career in a reserve role for Presbyterian, Mincy battled his way into the starting lineup as a freshman before starting every game for the Blue Hose as a sophomore. That season, he shined against big competition, scoring 27 against South Carolina, 28 against NC State, and 24 against High Point. Transferring up to the Atlantic-10 with George Mason for his junior season, Mincy didn’t miss a beat, earning All-A-10 honors and scoring 20+ points seven separate times.
Mincy has only improved over his three years of collegiate basketball, and plenty of responsibility rests on his shoulders this season as the focal point of South Carolina basketball’s offense. He can shoot it from deep (38.9 3P% last season) and distribute as well, as Mincy tallied 14 games of four or more assists last year. Time can only tell if Mincy can improve on his production yet again, but we’re betting on it. This is one of the most underrated pickups in the conference this season, and Mincy could easily average the most points for a Gamecock since the 2016-17 season. (That mark is 17.2, set by Meechie Johnson last year.)
South Carolina Basketball make-or-break player: Davion Hannah
Speaking of responsibility, Davion Hannah is basically South Carolina’s only true shooting guard heading into the season, though Marcus Johnson and Shane Blakeney might be able to spend some time at the two as well. Hannah played ten games for Alabama last season as a freshman and struggled to find playing time, averaging just 12.8 MPG. He won’t have any lack of playing time for South Carolina basketball, as Hannah has a wide-open path to starting. The issue is the opposite, actually: can Hannah handle being a starting guard in the SEC?
His underlying analytics weren’t the best, placing 11th on the team in PER out of a data set of 12 players with over 100 minutes played. His win shares/40 minutes were also 11th of 12 qualifying players for Alabama. But how much reliance are we going to put on such a small sample size? Hannah shot 36.4% from three, third-best on the team, and if we’re going to take his analytics to heart, then we’ll also have to take to heart that he can shoot the rock.
If South Carolina is going to improve upon last season, they’ll need big games from their guards. Hannah, a former four-star prospect for Alabama, has the potential to help out with that plenty.
Stat to know: 3PT%
At South Carolina basketball’s Garnet and Black Madness preseason event last season, Lamont Paris promised a lot of threes taken that year. The team held up their end of the bargain, ranking in the top 100 nationally with 25.8 attempts from deep per game. But they didn’t make many of those, placing in the bottom 50 of D-I teams with a 31.1 3PT% over the course of the season.
There were some games in which South Carolina really excelled from beyond the arc: the Gamecocks were 6-0 when they made 40.0% or more of their attempts from deep. However, that left them at a 7-19 mark when they failed to hit the 40% clip, which simply wasn’t reached enough. 12 of those losses came when South Carolina shot less than 28% from deep.
In the offseason, Paris made it a priority to surround the team with shooters. Almost every player on the team is able to at least be a threat from deep, which is crucial for Lamont Paris’s offensive schemes. The Paris offense relies on spacing, and having a handful of tall shooters (Bieliauskas, Nečas, Heide, Fernandez) can influence that mightily. It would be shocking if South Carolina ranked in the bottom 50 from the perimeter yet again.
South Carolina Basketball 2026-27 projections
Projected conference finish: 15th in SEC
Projected postseason ceiling: NCAA Tournament Round of 64 exit/NIT appearance