How the Gamecocks landed McCreary, Henry

Frank Martin said once the Gamecocks’ season ended, even though the team’s 2019 recruiting class was full, the coaching staff was still recruiting just in case a few scholarships came open later in the process.

They did, and the Gamecocks ultimately landed two bigs Frank Martin is really excited for heading into this season, starting with Jalyn McCreary, who could have been a Gamecock even sooner if there was a scholarship available.

“Jalyn came on a visit for the Auburn game and loved it. He wanted to commit to us then but I didn’t have a scholarship and I didn’t know about him enough. We didn’t have a scholarship and I wasn’t actively gathering information on him,” Martin said. “And when I mean gathering information, I don’t mean is his jump hook good or is his right hand good. I’m talking about who he is, what he’s about, what his family’s about, how he acts, how he deals with coaches, how he is as a teammate. I was not in the information gathering spot. We’re in the middle of the season and he had a game in Myrtle Beach. I told Chuck, if someone leaves, we have to have someone in the spring in the fold.”

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McCreary jumped on the coaching staff’s radar last summer with Bruce Shingler seeing him play before both Chuck Martin and Perry Clark both saw him play and were impressed with him.

The two sides got to know each other for a few months before Jason Cudd transferred out of the program, thus opening up a spot for McCreary.

Once that happened, the two sides worked quickly together with McCreary taking an official visit and committing just a day after that.

“I wasn’t going to have a scholarship for someone who our staff liked that much. Then the whole thing with Jason Cudd kind of popped, which caught me off guard. I was at peace with Jason coming back,” Martin said. “As soon as he made that decision, we then aggressively went after Jalyn, who already built a relationship with and he knew a lot about us. he made a pretty quick decision after that.”

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The Gamecocks quickly added Micaiah Henry after that, near the end of May, as a graduate transfer post player who can step in and play right away.

Henry, who played the previous three seasons at Tennessee Tech, averaged 9.7 points and 4.7 rebounds last season and should be a big piece of the Gamecocks on both ends of the court.

One of the biggest reasons Henry liked South Carolina so much was because of the attention Martin showed him early in the process.

“We aggressively started pursuing grad transfers because we had too many freshmen,” Martin said. “Henry was available and I was the first coach to see him in person, and that loyalty meant something to him.”

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Both McCreary and Henry will be on campus later in the summer with McCreary graduating too late to get on campus for the first summer session and Henry finishing up a few classes before coming to Columbia.

The Gamecocks are also bringing in Wildens Leveque, another big in the class who comes in listed at 6-foot-10, 230 pounds.

“I like kids that keep getting better. Who he was two years ago to who he is now is day and night. Nine times out of 10 guys that get better throughout high school will get better throughout college," Martin said of Leveque when he signed. "He’s a worker; he’s got great hands. He’s got an instinct to block shots. Obviously losing Chris, getting athleticism with size was important to us. We’re excited about Wildens.”