Shane Beamer will use the transfer portal but says it'll always start with high school recruiting for South Carolina
Since Shane Beamer arrived at South Carolina, the Gamecocks have been extremely active in the transfer portal. But make no mistake, the program is still very much committed to recruiting high school players.
“I always want to start with high school recruiting, always. I believe that’s how you build your roster,” said Beamer during a Welcome Home Tour event Monday in Florence. “And to me, the best teams are the ones that you’ve brought players in as freshmen. You develop them and then they’re there for their third, fourth, fifth year in the program.”
[GamecockCentral for $1: In-depth coverage and a great community]
In this new era of college football, it’s inevitable that some players will enter the transfer portal. Just this past academic year, South Carolina saw 25 players enter the portal. With the majority of those players being on scholarship, it allowed the Gamecocks to bring in 21 players via the transfer portal. As we saw in the spring, many of the new additions that transferred in should not only help the Gamecocks address concerns with depth, but they also add some much welcomed experience to many positional rooms. Still, this is just how things played out this past recruiting cycle, Beamer says.
“I don’t know if that’s as sustainable here as maybe it is at other schools because of, frankly, the size of the state. There’s not as many SEC football players coming out of South Carolina every single year than there are Texas, California, Florida, those type places. So you’ve got to be creative. I don’t ever want to say, okay, we’re going to sign 20 portal guys a year and that’s how we’re going to build our roster. I just think it’s hard to build a team year to year and sustain it year to year doing that.”
[Click here to subscribe to the Gamecock Central YouTube page for FREE!]
This past recruiting cycle, South Carolina landed 16 high school commitments for its 2024 class. That number is the second fewest in the Beamer era, only trailing his arrival when the Gamecocks landed just 11 players for its 2021 class. While 16 commitments may seem low, let’s add some context to it. South Carolina still finished ranked 19 in recruiting and landed two five-star commitments, according to On3’s rankings, for the first time in program history. Additionally, there’s more than two handful of players who’ve been with the program since 2020. With the COVID-19 season creating an extra year of eligibility for players who played, or didn’t play, in 2020 there’s some team that have a lot of veteran players returning. South Carolina is one of those teams.
While I expect to see USC’s high school recruiting class numbers be much higher with it’s 2025 class, with the transfer portal at the disposal for teams, quality over quantity is another factor to consider when we look at how many players were recruited via the transfer portal versus out of high school.
[Get news from GamecockCentral via email]
“We certainly want to be able to have the bulk of our class come from the high school ranks and then being able to supplement it year-to-year from the portal. Whether it be with a Spencer Rattler or the guys like Nick Gargiulo and some of the great guys that we’ve brought in that we’ve had success with from the transfer portal. So we’ll always utilize it. It’s when those guys fit what we’re about on and off the field and they’re looking for what we’re offering from an opportunity standpoint.
“But high school recruiting, we haven’t put any less importance on that. Our coaches are out recruiting right now and are attacking it harder than we ever have.”
