Could South Carolina athletics be headed for a Golden Age?
Men's basketball recruits don't tend to change their minds after making commitments to the University of North Carolina. And they especially don't consider South Carolina as an alternative if they do.
But that's exactly what happened last week when G.G. Jackson, widely considered the nation's No. 1 recruit, abruptly changed his mind about the Tar Heels, reclassified to the Class of 2022 and announced he was headed to Columbia to play for first-year coach Lamont Paris. The 6-foot-8 Jackson played at Ridge View High School, a stone's throw from the South Carolina campus.
This, of course, comes on the heels of the women's basketball team winning the NCAA Tournament last April and the football team winning a bowl game four months earlier under first-year coach Shane Beamer, who turned a two-win program around immediately.
Perhaps Beamer's most important accomplishments have come since his team played its last game, securing the likes of quarterback Spencer Rattler, tight end Austin Stogner, wide receiver Antwane Wells and running back Christian Beal-Smith through the transfer portal while continuing to shift the program's image as more than just an average or lesser team in the powerful SEC.
Rattler did lose his starting job at Oklahoma, but comes to the Gamecocks as a built-in Heisman Trophy contender and is arguably the most dynamic quarterback prospect the team has ever had.
Jackson clearly has that status now with the men's basketball program.
All of these things serve to beg a question: Is South Carolina athletics about to enter a Golden Age?
Keeping in mind that progress isn't always linear and that the football team, in particular, likely will continue to improve even if it doesn't match or exceed last season's seven-win total, things still sure are looking up for the university's most visible sports.
"I love coaching this team," Beamer said during the SEC Media Days. "The work ethic and maturity, the hunger to improve has been evident since January, when we came back after the bowl win. We made great strides last season, going from two wins to seven wins. And the challenge for us is making sure our guys understand that going from seven to the next step, the next level, is going to take even more work. And everything that I've seen from our guys since they came back shows me that they understand that.
"Last year, I stood up here and there wasn't a single person in here that was talking about South Carolina football other than maybe our beat writers. No one was talking about any of the individuals on in our football team across the country last year. ... That's different this year. They're talking about us nationally, which is what we want. We have high expectations that South Carolina ... there's more buzz about this program right now."
Buzz that comes from some of the nation's top athletes suddenly choosing South Carolina and not having any second thoughts.
Beamer talked about his desired goal of having a program where his players wake up each morning and look forward to coming to the facility.
"I don't know if that was always the case before I got here," he said.
The coach believes the university is perfectly positioned in the Name, Image and Likeness market and loves the fact that Texas is headed to the SEC, opening up that fertile state even more for recruiting. He even pointed to the direct flights from Dallas to Columbia "that recruits can certainly get on."
Golden Age?
Valid question.