Following an 85-50 loss to No. 17 Mississippi State, South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris spoke to the media who made the trip to Starkville after the game. Below is a summary of what he had to say.

— Mississippi State did a lot of things well, South Carolina didn’t do many things well at all. They played poorly in a lot of ways today.

— Sometimes it’s like that. This was the first SEC game for a couple guys on the team that play heavy minutes. But they also have a lot of experienced guys who didn’t play great. MSU played great. You’re going to get a wide spread when things like this happen.

— Looked at their game last year at Mississippi State, and the SEC opener at home against them last year. South Carolina played atrocious but went into halftime with a lead because they defended on a consistent basis. This year, they’re still learning how to do that. Not sure why it was a bad start today. They just didn’t have it.

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— Would agree that the team wasn’t physical or aggressive today. You just do it to fix that problem. By nature, Mississippi State is a more aggressive group of individuals. Needed to match that aggressiveness with resistance, which they didn’t today. To dig deeper defensively, that takes some real maturity. That was one area he didn’t think they answered the bell. They didn’t compete that way.

— Wouldn’t surprise him if they went 2-for-19 from three or if they didn’t adjust to some of the unique things MSU does as a defensive unit. But not fighting, that did surprise him. It doesn’t anger him. It just surprises him.

— Been in a lot of games over his coaching career. He’s seen that a lot where teams have struggled in games. Always optimistic about how his team will respond. But at some point in the second half, he felt some disconnect that the light wasn’t coming on, which is a dangerous game to play.

— With the slow starts, there’s been a variety of ways in which they’ve struggled to score. Sometimes it’s just missing shots that don’t fall your way. The case today was struggling to pass the ball to the guys in the same colored uniforms. It just seems like things are connected in terms of one guy struggling which leads to another struggling as well.

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— It’s hard to throw a guy out there who hasn’t played a lot of minutes (in reference to being asked about Arden Conyers). It’s hard to inject a person into a scenario when they haven’t been in this scenario much before. Some of Cam Scott’s minutes looked like that to some degree with struggles. That’s hard to go to a guy like Conyers who hasn’t been in those spots yet.

— His urgency is the same for every single game. Every single game. It’s an 18-hole, 18-game story. At some point, you’ll look back and say this is what you did or this is not what you did. For him, there’s not one bit more urgency. This is a good team. They are as motivated to be 1-1 in the conference as they would be if they were 1-0 after today. They are very urgent in everything they do.

South Carolina football fans feel like their Gamecocks are on the rise. Following a strong back half of 2024, they are not alone in those thoughts. The hype surrounding USC and some of the team’s stars will be loud this offseason.

On Friday, On3’s Andy Staples and Ari Wasserman released their way-too-early 2025 top 10, and South Carolina cracked the list. In fact, the Gamecocks made it with room to spare, coming in at No. 7.

Their entire top 10 is below.

1. Texas Longhorns
2. Oregon Ducks
3. Ohio State Buckeyes
4. Penn State Nittany Lions
5. Notre Dame Fighting Irish
6. Georgia Bulldogs
7. South Carolina Gamecocks
8. Clemson Tigers
9. Florida Gators
10. Auburn Tigers

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South Carolina’s inclusion at No. 7, according to Staples, comes down to the team’s young talent. Dylan Stewart was an instant-impact menace off the edge, and then quarterback LaNorris Sellers turned into a star. Like Sellers and Stewart, left tackle Josiah Thompson also garnered some Freshman All-American love. The Gamecocks are bringing in their third top-20 high school recruiting class in a row and have hit home runs in the transfer portal in two of the past three cycles.

Living up to the hype of offseason top 10 expectations won’t be easy. However, with elite rising sophomores at (arguably) the most important positions on the field, the Gamecocks could be positioned to make a run. New offensive coordinator Mike Shula will need to do well, and the USC defense also will need to be great again. If those things happen and Shane Beamer and company can nail the transfer portal again, then Staples and Wasserman could be onto something.

This year, the Gamecocks finished 9-4 despite being pegged for 5 or 6 wins by most outlets this preseason. Carolina played in the best non-College Football Playoff bowl game, too, though they lost a heartbreaker to Illinois.

A truck driver from suburban Oak Lawn was charged after a bomb threat led authorities to shut down a South Carolina interstate for hours, law enforcement said.

Ahmad Jamal Khamees Alhendi, 28, was charged with breach of peace of high and aggravated nature, conveying false information about a bomb threat and no vehicle license.

At around 2:45 p.m. on Thursday, a South Carolina State Transport Police officer pulled over a tractor-trailer on Interstate 85 in Greenville County due to a missing license plate, WYFF, the NBC affiliate in Greenville, South Carolina, reported. During the stop, the driver, identified as Alhendi, indicated there was an explosive device inside the vehicle, officials said.

All lanes of the highway were shut down while law enforcement investigated the threat.

Following the incident, Alhendi was placed on a detainer by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Alhendi failed to comply with the terms of his legal admittance and now has a hearing scheduled for Aug. 6, 2026, before an immigration judge, WYFF reported.