How Pharoh Cooper became a Gamecock and not a Tar Heel

If North Carolina’s football coaches had been able, or willing, to come up with two more tickets to the 2012 basketball game against Duke, Pharoh Cooper probably would be wearing blue.

“Originally, his dream school was North Carolina,” said Jim Bob Bryant, Cooper’s coach at Havelock High School in eastern North Carolina.

That changed during Cooper’s junior year, when a Tar Heels assistant football coach invited Cooper and high school teammate Derrell Scott to a recruiting weekend that featured one of college basketball’s best rivalries.

“That’s a big deal. I called the kids and told them and they are all jacked up and putting it on Twitter and Facebook,” Bryant said. “They would have probably committed to North Carolina that day.”

However, the North Carolina coach told Bryant the next day that his invitation had been premature, Bryant said.

“They said, ‘Coach, we are just bringing our top recruits in next week,’” Bryant said. “I said, ‘You’re making a mistake.’ He said, ‘We’re still going to recruit the heck out of them.’ I said, ‘There ain’t no need because they are going to wipe you off the list.’ ”

They did, despite a consolation invitation to a North Carolina-Clemson basketball game later that season.

“I said, ‘Coach, you know that isn’t the same,’ ” Bryant said.

After cutting ties with his home state school, Cooper signed with South Carolina in 2013 and had 69 catches for 1,136 yards on the way to being named first-team All-SEC last year.

“I didn’t have a good feel with their coaching staff, and I turned away from them,” Pharoh Cooper said. “They kind of did some things I didn’t like. I kind of take that game personally.

“I’m ready for that game.”

North Carolina signed two wide receivers – Bug Howard out of Rochelle, Ga., and Jordan Fieulleteau out of Raleigh – in Cooper’s class. Howard had 42 catches for 455 yards last season. Fieulleteau, a teammate of South Carolina quarterback Connor Mitch at Wakefield High School, had two catches for 29 yards last year.

“I think this year is going to be a, ‘See what you missed out on,’ type of thing,” Pharoh’s father Glenn Cooper said.

The Gamecocks and Tar Heels played in 2013, Cooper’s freshman season, but Cooper didn’t get into that game until late and didn’t register a catch, although South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier said at the time he wanted to target Cooper since Cooper was playing against his home state school. Cooper is eager for a second chance this year, Bryant said.

“He’ll have a chip on his shoulder when he plays them,” Bryant said.

This story was originally published August 26, 2015 at 4:11 PM with the headline "How Pharoh Cooper became a Gamecock and not a Tar Heel."