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Marquel Blackwell eager to get going at South Carolina: 'I'm all ball'

imageby: Jack Veltri01/22/24jacktveltri
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Now-former Ole Miss coach Marquel Blackwell and RB Zach Evans

Moving all over the place is nothing new for Marquel Blackwell. Since 2017, he’s been a coach at five different schools with three of those stops being one-year stints.

It can undoubtedly be a challenge, especially with Blackwell having a family of his own. But he doesn’t exactly seem phased by any of it.

“I’m all ball,” said Blackwell, who was hired as South Carolina’s new running backs coach. “I’m trying to make sure we do the right things in recruiting, getting caught up on that…My wife and kids probably won’t be here until May. So I’ll be all ball and all about the players.”

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After spending the last two years in the SEC at Ole Miss and Texas A&M, Blackwell will be tasked with turning around a running back room that was worst in the conference last season.

Fortunately, South Carolina went headfirst into the transfer portal and brought in a good crop of talent at the position. The Gamecocks added Raheim Sanders, who looks to be the leading man, while also bringing in Oscar Adaway and Jawarn Howell.

Blackwell could be the right guy to help make South Carolina’s offense more balanced with a rushing attack next season. When he was at Ole Miss, he was responsible for developing Quinshon Judkins into a 1,567-yard rusher as a freshman.

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As Blackwell steps into his new role, he knows what he has to do to adjust quickly. And it all starts with the connections to the players.

“The biggest thing is trust, you know what I mean? Being around those guys. They have to trust you,” Blackwell said. “The next thing is being honest and up front. Owning a standard, understanding a standard, holding everyone accountable to the standard.

“The next thing is communication. We must communicate. I just went through it with a couple of those guys and that’s a big thing with me. I’m not a guy that’s going to sit back and say hey, this is the only way to do things. You’ve got a lot of different guys that come from a lot of different places that you have to relate a lot of different ways.”

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