Will South Carolina continue to dive into the portal in '22 class?

And just like that, South Carolina’s 2021 recruiting class is finalized.

The Gamecocks landed transfer defensive back Carlins Platel Wednesday afternoon, using up their final scholarship in the group on another transfer portal addition.

That brings the total to eight players Shane Beamer and his staff plucked out of the portal this offseason, a trend Beamer hopes is not as frequent moving forward.

“It’s not always going to be that high. I hope it’s not. We always want to start in the high school ranks,” Beamer said.

“But absolutely if there’s an opportunity to add a fantastic young man and player to your program that has experience coming from another college you certainly want to have the ability to do that. Obviously we have to be good about balancing scholarship numbers and roster numbers going forward.”

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Before Platel’s addition, the Gamecocks signed seven players who were in the portal with two receivers—EJ Jenkins and Ahmarean Brown—two linebackers or edge players in Jordan Strachan and Debo Williams, quarterback Jason Brown, defensive back David Spaulding and defensive lineman Keem Green.

Beamer and his staff were able to do that in large part because they signed a smaller class in December and had the roster and scholarship flexibility to bring in transfer portal players in the midyear.

“I could have gone out in December and signed 10 more high school players for the heck of it to have a nice signing class of 20 signees that’s ranked a little higher. I didn’t want to do that,” Beamer said.

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“For me it was important to keep those guys committed, take a deep breath, let’s get our coaches in here, figure out what exactly fits the system we put in place from an offensive, defensive and special teams standpoint and go recruit to that. It happened to be the transfers were the priority this year.”

The Gamecocks did go out and land three high school commitments in the late signing period in junior college linebacker Bam Scott, cornerback LaDareyen Craig and flipped Kolbe Fields from Memphis to South Carolina.

“If guys hadn’t signed somewhere—guys like Kolbe Fields—then let’s go full speed ahead on them. That’s what we did. Frankly, it worked out that way that the majority of guys who were on the transfer market,” Beamer said.

“Credit to so many people in this building who handle recruiting. We have a fantastic support staff of people who were already here when I got hired that we’ve been able to add since I got hired. Hats off to so many of those guys.”

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How South Carolina built its 2021 group is not likely to be done in the future with over 30 percent of initial counters being transfer players.

As the staff starts building its 2022 recruiting board nad ultimately the class, Beamer wants to start with the high school players first and go from there.

“You never know who’s going to be in the transfer portal. It’s not realistic to sit here and say we have 20 scholarships for the 2022 class and wait to see who’s in the portal come December,” he said.

“Always we’re going to start with the high school ranks and get a guy in here that’s going to be here for four years and go from there.”