Gamecocks keep class together after an 'interesting' December

Between questions about his job security to ill-advised comments from university president Bob Caslen to “negativity outside” campus, it’s been a wild 18 days for the Gamecocks.

But, despite the whirlwind around the program, Muschamp also inked what’s a top 20 recruiting class and landed the No. 8 overall player in the class in Jordan Burch while keeping other big pieces like MarShawn Lloyd and Luke Doty.

“You deal with a lot on the recruiting trail with about 90 percent of it being not true by some of our lovely competitors,” he said. “Our staff did a fantastic job—Matt Lindsey and Jessica Jackson—of holding things together in-house and obviously our staff did a fantastic job of keeping those guys together. We faced a lot of negativity outside our campus and some on our campus. I appreciate the type young men and their character.”

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South Carolina landed Burch over Georgia and LSU primarily with Clemson and Alabama also in the mix.

They also withstood pushes from Georgia for Lloyd and Oklahoma for defensive back Dominick Hill. Some of their longest-tenured commitments like Tyshawn Wannamaker and Mohamed Kaba committed and stayed locked in through a rough 4-8 season.

“They never wavered and had a lot of people coming after them,” Muschamp said.

But, as is typical with recruiting in the SEC, Muschamp and the Gamecocks faced negative recruiting from what Muschamp called South Carolina’s “lovely competitors” and some local negative recruiting as well.

University president Caslen told the Florence Morning News Ray Tanner reached out to Florida State to see how the Seminoles structured Willie Taggart’s buyout, only to release a statement a few hours later disputing that.

With all of that uncertainty surrounding the program, it’s typical for other schools to prey on that, but Muschamp said the Gamecocks and their staff don’t dip into negative recruiting.

“We kind of have a policy around here where we’re going to promote the University of South Carolina,” he said. “I don’t know how other teams run their program, nor do I care. I don’t know what their depth chart looks like. I don’t know what they do schematically. I don’t talk about what people do.”

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When asked to elaborate on the “on our campus” negativity, Muschamp chucked and said it was “just a shot” and moved onto the next question.

As the Gamecocks put the finishing touches on their signing class—they inked 17 today and Muschamp said they have six spots remaining—this wild December comes to an end with the focus now on the final signing period in February.

“We’re going to promote the University of South Carolina,” Muschamp said. “I think that’s how you do things with class. I learned a lot, stuff I already knew, about the people around us. It’s been an interesting December, I can assure you of that.”