Saturday, January 9, 2010

Gamecocks get CB Hampton over Tar Heels, Vols

Darling High CB Victor Hampton, playing in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio, committed to South Carolina during a break in the game moments ago.

Hampton formally starred at Independence, but was kicked off the team last summer by coach Tom Knotts. At the time he was committed to Florida, but the Gators quit calling at that point. He transferred to Darlington High, cleaned up his act, and today at the game, picked the South Carolina hat in front of him over the caps of North Carolina and Tennessee.

--Stan Olson

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

never had an offer from unc

SECfan said...

Scout.com says otherwise. I think he was USCe all along though

Anonymous said...

it wasn't a "committable" offer. UNC backed off a few months back. Not sure if you can go to Inside Carolina and look at all kids who hold actual offers from UNC, but Hampton isn't one of them.

Stan Olson said...

Here's what I wonder. Are the Heels offering ANYBODY? Every time I write about someone picking X over UNC, guys post that, oh, the Heels never offered him. According to those folks, anyone who goes elsewhere didn't get an offer. My bet is that if Hampton had shown real interest, he would have been offered in a heartbeat.
I can go to Inside Carolina, and one thing I notice is that an awful lot of really good players have gone elsewhere.
And it's a huge blow that Willis switched back to Tennessee. Early this week, many of you posted about that "done deal" to Chapel Hill when I said it was possibility.
That said, this is interesting. Maybe Butch can still turn a few heads; almost a month remains....

Anonymous said...

This is an UNBELIEVABLY TERRIBLE day for Coach Davis and UNC.

Anonymous said...

Hampton never did have a commitable offer. I think he would have gotten one if not for the troubles he had this year. After the embarrassment of Rhodes and Farms I think Butch held back. Need to start producing on the field and we will start getting some of these guys. We are in the discussion for a lot of them but end up losing out in the end. If we can somehow string together a couple of 10 win seasons I think some of these close calls will start falling are way.

Losing willis was huge. Make no mistake he told the staff before this trip that he was going to be a Heel but Tenn. recruits got in his ear and swayed him. Not much more you can do. Have a huge recruiting weekend next weekend that could save this class.

Anonymous said...

I'm with ya Stan. Every time someone doesnt wanna go to Crapple Hill, "they were never offered." One common thread with all of these guys today.....SEC! UT, UF, USC, the top recruits want to play in the top conference. You need to face it, the SEC is getting stronger by the year and quite frankly the ACC is an embarrassment as a football conference. That was proven when UGA/USC squashed your conference champions.

SECfan said...

UNC has the 56th ranked class in the country, I hope nobody really believes they wouldn't have taken hampton in a heartbeat. Its not like they were recruiting over him. That is basically the only time a player can not cash in on an offer. Thats why T.J. Leifheit ended up at UNC, he was recruited over.

Willis always wanted to be a Vol, he was scared about the fall out from the NY Times article. He got down to the game and looked around, didn't see anyone else heading to UNC and got his answer. Early in the week he knew he even slipped one time in an interview and showed his cards. "It felt like family with the players and the coaches, and not just one time but everytime I was there" He visited UT on his own bill 5x. UNc once and UCLA once.