‘Can’t happen’: Shane Beamer on Gamecocks not signing HS tailback, future plans
If there was any question as to why South Carolina parted with running backs coach Marquel Blackwell after just two years, allow Shane Beamer to explain.
“I mean,” the Gamecocks head coach said during a Wednesday interview on 107.5 The Game, “it is what it is and it’s unfortunate. But we have not signed a high school running back in two years.”
Beamer paused.
“That just — that cannot happen,” he said.
That recruiting failure seems to be a big part of why veteran Stan Drayton is now South Carolina’s running backs coach. But Blackwell’s inability to sign a single high school tailback in two years leaves Drayton in a tough position.
With Oscar Adaway III, Rahsul Faison and Bradley Dunn out of eligibility, the Gamecocks’ running back room consists of just three scholarship backs: soon-to-be redshirt juniors Isaiah Augustave and Jawarn Howell, as well as redshirt sophomore Matthew Fuller.
On a typical 85-scholarship team, Beamer said, he wants to have five scholarship running backs “at all times.”
Which gets us to the obvious: South Carolina will be searching for a few transfer running backs when the portal opens Jan. 2.
“We need to go out and find some guys to increase the competition and add to the depth in that room,” Beamer said in his radio interview.
In saying that, though, Beamer wanted to make it clear that this doesn’t have to play out the way it did after the 2023 season, when the Gamecocks were low on running back depth and added one of the nation’s top transfer tailbacks in Rocket Sanders.
“I don’t think we need to go out and just bring in some dynamic starter,” Beamer said. “Would that be nice if you want to become relatively cheap? Yeah.
“But do we need to go out and spend a ton of money to go get a dude at running back, necessarily? I don’t feel that way because we have some ‘dudes’ already in that room. We just need to increase the depth and competition around them.”
If that’s the case, it would show strong belief in the trio of Augustave (two carries last year), Fuller (72 carries for 260 yards) and Howell (14 carries for 80 yards), who showed flashes in 2025 but have yet to prove they can be top backs in the SEC.
Fuller — the last high school running back signed by USC (Class of 2024) — was certainly the most productive last season, but both Augustave (Colorado) and Howell (S.C. State) have experience leading teams in rushing.
As the portal nears opening, the question around South Carolina is not whether it will add transfer running backs, but whether any of the transfers will be good enough to be the No. 1 option.
