South Carolina set to add new football assistant coach Friday
The South Carolina football program is set to add another piece to its coaching staff following last week’s departure of Bryan McClendon.
An “assistant football coach contract” is part of Friday’s University of South Carolina board of trustees meeting agenda.
That new hire will be former North Carolina State co-offensive coordinator and running backs coach Des Kitchings, according to GamecockCentral. He takes the spot vacated by McClendon, who is joining the Oregon Ducks staff.
McClendon’s departure hasn’t been confirmed publicly by South Carolina or Oregon. The former Gamecocks receiver coach was still listed on USC athletics’ website as of Thursday morning. McClendon, however, has changed his Twitter profile page to an Oregon theme and his bio says, “WR Coach at University of Oregon.”
Kitchings will coach USC’s running backs, GamecockCentral reported. That would mean the staff will have to shuffle duties again — Bobby Bentley had coached running backs in the abbreviated spring practices. Last year’s running backs coach, Thomas Brown, left USC this offseason for the same position with the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams.
Kitchings is a native of Wagener and played his college ball at Furman. He had coaching stops at Vanderbilt under Bobby Johnson and Robbie Calwell; Air Force with Troy Calhoun; and spent the last nine years in Raleigh with Tom O’Brien and Dave Doeren.
Last season, he helped guide former four-star recruit Zonovan Knight as well as Jordan Houston to solid seasons. He also served as recruiting coordinator for N.C. State at points. Recruiting North Carolina will be particularly important in the current cycle, as South Carolina’s crop of talent isn’t a strong as usual.
Kitchings will inherit a running back room with a good bit of turnover. Four senior backs are gone, and the group adds a high four-star freshman in MarShawn Lloyd, plus freshman Rashad Amos and junior college runner Zaquandre White.
Kitchings’s N.C. State deal ran through next season, so he will still earn $492,500, with the Wolfpack making up the difference between that number and what South Carolina pays him (assuming it is “market rate”).
Also on Friday’s board agenda: contract extensions for football assistants Bentley and Mike Peterson; basketball assistants Perry Clark, Chuck Martin and Lisa Boyer; as well as USC Olympic sports head coaches Curtis Frye, Bill McDonald and Beverly Smith.
This story was originally published April 23, 2020 at 11:28 AM.
