What led Cam Scott back to South Carolina for his sophomore season

South Carolina’s roster will almost look unrecognizable when the team takes the floor this season. In the offseason, the Gamecocks added 11 new players with only three returning from last season.

For a time, it looked like that number would be two at most when Cam Scott entered the transfer portal on April 1. But towards the end of the month, he decided to instead stay at South Carolina for his sophomore year.

“Just for me and my family, it was mainly just finding the right spot for me to continue my development, being able to see if this was the place for me or if maybe I needed something else,” Scott told GamecockCentral. “Ultimately, this is a decision that we made. … We trust the staff with our whole open family, open hands, open arms.”

Scott said he was open to all options when he first entered the portal. He went in with an open mind and garnered interest from other schools. He described the experience as “basically beginning recruiting class all over again.”

Scott went through a similar process before when he flipped his high school commitment from Texas to South Carolina. When it came to this latest decision, he felt remaining with the Gamecocks would be best for him and his career.

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As a freshman last year, Scott averaged 2.5 points per game and shot 27.8 percent from the field. The former four-star recruit struggled to find consistency as South Carolina endured a tough 12-20 season.

Scott showed flashes at times when given a chance. In the Gamecocks’ first-round loss to Arkansas in the SEC Tournament, Scott scored eight points and knocked down a pair of three-pointers while collecting four rebounds.

Now going into the new season, Scott has laid out some goals for himself to grow as a player. The first is to get stronger. He’s currently listed at 6-foot-6, 172 pounds, only weighing two pounds more than he did last year. So ideally, he’d like to put on a bit more weight, which he thinks could better help him.

“We’re playing in, if not one of the more physical leagues in the country,” Scott said. “With our officiating, we let a lot of stuff go, a lot of bumps, a lot of second bumps, a lot of hands, checks, grabs. So being able to play through that, being able to stick to what I need to stick to so I can help the team be better is huge.”

Scott also wants to do a better job of understanding his role on the team. While his minutes were limited as a freshman, he hopes to see more floor time and develop his game this year.

“I feel like for me, being able to find my niche in the team, making sure we all mix together, regardless of what lineup we have, being able to play positionless on our team,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of guys who are running the same heights, so we can play very positionless and very free form. So I feel like that’d be something useful.”

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