BJ Mack Discusses How He Ended Up At South Carolina
The SEC sent eight programs to the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament this past season. South Carolina's men's basketball team was one of the six left out after an 11-21 mark led to the third-worst record in the conference. This lead coach Lamont Paris to prioritize improving the roster via the transfer portal this offseason.
One of these transfer additions was Wofford forward BJ Mack, who averaged 16.6 points and 5.6 rebounds per game for the Terriers this past Winter. When Mack joined the Gamecocks radio affiliate 107.5 The Game on Tuesday, he discussed how coach Paris contacted him, which took little time.
"When I first entered the portal, Coach Paris was the first coach to call me and my dad," Mack recalled. "He hopped off the [team] bus and went straight there. I was at Wofford at the time, so we met at the gym and were able to talk for a little bit, and I knew from right there that I was a priority for him."
When it came time to inform Lamont of his decision, BJ called him the night before he made his commitment public and remembered the second-year head man being quite anxious while awaiting the news.
"When I called [Coach], at first, he was nervous. He was like, 'I hope this is a great call,' and I was like, 'Yes sir, it is!' so I just told him, and it was around 10 pm the night before [I publicly announced], and he was just excited. He was saying that he was running up and down the stairs in his house."
Many around Columbia hope Mack's addition can help get the Gamecocks over the hump in more games this season after they ran out of gas in multiple competitive games this past season, something that BJ noted from afar.
"I [saw] that they had a lot of guys that were hungry and ready to compete," Mack recalled about last year's team. "They were in a lot of games. They just didn't really have enough firepower because they were so young, and it [was] the first year, so not a lot of guys knew how to play together, but now we have a lot of older guys this year, so we're expecting to do a lot of great things."
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