Kitchings’ first take on Gamecocks running backs: ‘MarShawn is as advertised’
South Carolina football assistant coach Des Kitchings is in a bit of a tight spot.
He was officially hired last Friday. But he can’t come to town because of the coronavirus. He can’t hold an official meeting and start instructing his new position group because it’s finals week, though he has spoken to some of the players over the phone.
But he has had a chance to look at the film from spring and get a bit of a sense of the running backs he’ll be working with.
“I think MarShawn (Lloyd) is as advertised,” Kitchings said. “So look forward to working with him. It was only five practices this spring that I kind of really focused on because of the offense of (Mike) Bobo, and you saw some flashes both with Kevin (Harris) and DeShaun (Fenwick) as far as guys that are coming back. So I like what I see there.
“The addition of Adam Prentice will play a big role in the offense going into the fall.”
Lloyd is a borderline five-star freshman who wowed at the start of camp. He’s projected to make a strong case for the starting job when things return to normal.
Harris posted 179 yards last season despite missing much of it with a torn ligament. Fenwick posted 111 yards, 102 of them against Vanderbilt.
There’s only so much a coach can see in five practices, the majority without pads, but Lloyd did manage to pop.
“He has some juice in his legs,” Kitchings said. “He’s a kid that makes a cut and gets vertical very fast. Saw him breaking a couple tackles.
“There’s some intangible things you see there that says this guy’s got it.”
He ran for more than 1,100 yards as a high school senior and had a run dynamic enough to get on “SportsCenter.” Kitchings noted he’d have no qualms playing a freshman heavily. Last season, his top two runners, who averaged 19.75 carries a game, were both freshmen.
The film had nothing of incoming backs Zaquandre White and Rashad Amos, as neither had enrolled for the spring. But Kitchings has a feel for both the junior college transfer and the incoming freshman, respectively.
“I remember Zaquandre actually when he was down at Florida State,” Kitchings said. “Playing against him. Excited about him coming on board as well because he’s dynamic. You talk about a guy who is going to score touchdowns for you in a hurry. He’s a guy. Rashad Amos, last fall, we even looked at him some, and by the time we started moving forward, he had already committed to South Carolina.
“I think he has some good tools as an athlete, as a ball carrier, a guy that can win in space and again be able to score touchdowns.”
The primary challenge for the Kitchings with the group will be the unorthodox preparation. There’s no clear sense when players and coaches will be able to return to campus or how the preseason might look.
Players are out of the usual strength program routine, and unlike last year, the group overall is short on experience (the 2019 backfield ended up with four seniors).
“Unfortunately (we’re) not able to work with them and don’t know when we’ll be able to work,” Kitchings said. “So we’ll be more mental going forward.
“So those are some guys that you just study here and say, OK, they have some skills and some abilities. Now let’s get together, at some point, and working together trying to refine that.”
