Zacch Pickens accepts Senior Bowl invite
South Carolina football senior defensive tackle Zacch Pickens will play in the 2023 Reese’s Senior Bowl, the game announced on Twitter Wednesday afternoon.
The annual contest that features rising NFL Draft prospects is set for a 2:30 p.m. ET kickoff in Mobile, Ala., and will be featured on the NFL Network.
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According to the Senior Bowl website:
The Reese’s Senior Bowl is widely regarded as the preeminent college football all-star game and the first stage in the NFL Draft process. The longest continual-running all-star game has taken place in Mobile, Alabama the past 73 years. More than 900 NFL personnel, including key decision-makers from all 32 teams, and over 900 media members from around the country were credentialed last year. This past April, the game produced a record-tying 106 total picks for the second straight year, representing 40 percent of the entire NFL draft, including 45 of the top 100 players selected.
• Win a football autographed by Rattler, Bell, Wells, Gwyn, Kroeger
Pickens, a former five-star prospect from T.L. Hanna in Anderson, S.C. has started all 25 games for South Carolina during the last two seasons at defensive tackle.
The 6-foot-4, 305-pounder collected 42 tackles including 4.0 TFLs and 2.5 sacks as a senior this season.
For his career, Pickens has accumulated 131 total tackles including 11.5 TFLs and 7.5 sacks.
Pickens signed with South Carolina in the 2019 class. The On3Consensus, which averages all the major recruiting rankings, ranked Pickens as the No. 17 overall prospect, No. 3 defensive lineman and No. 1 prospect in the state of South Carolina.
Kai Kroeger making difference in South Carolina’s success
by Jack Veltri
There were a handful of players who were critical to South Carolina’s upset win over Clemson last Saturday. But none were more important than Kai Kroeger.
Kroeger averaged 53.7 yards per punt and pinned the Tigers three times inside their own 5-yard line, twice in the fourth quarter. Clemson didn’t make it into Carolina territory on those drives.
If South Carolina’s offense was struggling to get a first down, it would try to get in good spots for Kroeger to kick away.
“We called another screenplay just to get positive yards so he could flip the field,” Spencer Rattler said. “I said, ‘Kai, go flip the field, man.’ So he kicked it 70 yards, 60 yards, however far it was. He did a great out there. He was kicking the heck out of the ball.”
Three of his kicks traveled more than 60 yards, all in the second half. One of his shortest punts of the day turned out to be the biggest.
