There’s a good chance, Shane Beamer said, the top prospects in the state of Georgia for the 2022 and 2023 classes will be in front of someone wearing a Gamecock polo this week.
With the Gamecocks playing in Athens Saturday, the coaching staff is taking full advantage of the opportunity and using it to make the rounds across a pivotal recruiting state and see different prospects.
“There are a lot of great players and we’re going to battle them for all of them and make it hard for young men to tell us no. We’re going to be all over the state recruiting on Friday,” Beamer said.
“That’ll always be a critical area for us with so many fantastic players who’ve come out of Georgia who’ve been major contributors here and will continue to be going forward.”
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South Carolina’s already hit the area hard in just the 2022 class with five prospects from the state already committed: Grayson Mains, Donovan Westmoreland, Cason Henry, Felix Hixon and Emory Floyd.
But the next step coming up is getting out to the schools, which the Gamecocks have done now for the past couple weeks across South Carolina and a few neighboring states while Justin Stepp flew all the way to text watching receiver commit Landon Samson.
The reception, Beamer said, has been great so far actually getting out and seeing prospects face to face and not over a computer screen.
“The response has been fantastic. We’ve been some of the first, if not the first school, to see some of these guys early on. I know they appreciate seeing us and we appreciate the high schools allowing us to come in and visit with the coaches at the school and watch games,” Beamer said.
“Even our first home game, the number of prospects we had here for eastern Illinois was great as well. It certainly beats staring at a computer screen and talking to these guys on Zoom. I haven’t been able to, but it’s great to get guys on our campus and great for our coaches to get out and see guys.”
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It’s also been a good start for South Carolina specifically on the football field with a 2-0 start and a dominant start defensively against FCS Eastern Illinois and Group of 5 East Carolina.
While defensively it’s been a hot start, coordinator Clayton White said he’s not focused on just the results but putting the product on the field and the system they’ve told recruits so much about during the offseason.
“The main thing is we want to make sure the things we told them we’re going to do as far as how we use our scheme, how we use each player at each position, we preach on that more,” White said.
“We don’t get into, ‘Look what we’re doing,’ and all that stuff. It’s more about the system we told you guys we’re going to run and how we’re going to utilize you as a player when you come here and how we’re going to develop you. We focus on that more.”
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South Carolina had a great summer on the recruiting trail, building out over half of its 2022 recruiting class, currently ranked No. 17 nationally and sixth in the SEC.
As they go forward they’ll continue to battle Georgia for in-state players and the next step is this weekend.
“We have a fantastic place to sell here from an academic standpoint, from a city to live in to facility from the opportunity to do something special here and come win a SEC championship,” Beamer said. “We have a lot of sell here. It’s a little different than maybe what they’re selling.”
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