The likely Gamecocks starter Will Muschamp found chasing chickens

Next season, South Carolina guard Sadarius Hutcherson likely will have to put his quick feet to use.

He’s on track to be a starting guard for the Gamecocks. That’ll mean bringing his considerable strength to bear on linemen directly in front of him, but it will also entail slipping down to the second level or pulling out in front on outside runs.

Will Muschamp has seen plenty of his footspeed in practice, and he got his first sense of it in an unusual spot.

Muschamp, then a new coach, and then-offensive line coach Shawn Elliott dropped in on Hutcherson’s Huntingdon, Tenn., high school school just after the 2015 season.

“We show up at the school and I ask where Sadarius was,” Muschamp said on an episode of his call-in show. “And they said he was at the barn class. I didn’t really understand what they talked about the barn class.”

“B-A-R-N, Barn.”

That required a little bit of a journey.

“So we walked through the high school, we walk through the woods,” Muschamp said. “There actually was a barn back there. Probably a mile and a half from the school. And he’s back there chasing chickens. It was the Future Farmers of America class. So for the first time in my life, I evaluated a guy chasing chickens.”

He apparently did well enough, as the staff took him, and since his first year on campus coaches have raved about his potential and ceiling. He went from a 230-pound defensive end to a 311-pound offensive guard, who could well find himself at tackle with enough development in pass blocking (he did next to none of it before college).

One thing that makes a tackle is his feet. It’s not clear how chasing fowl factors in there, but it can’t hurt.

“He was really good at it,” Muschamp said. “So I don’t know if they do that a lot where he’s from. But he’s very good at it.”

This story was originally published July 6, 2018 at 7:50 PM.