The top in-state basketball players used to come to USC. What changed?
Carey Rich wore a black polo with a familiar block C logo on the left chest. He was in a conference room outside his office at the City of Columbia’s Parks and Recreation headquarters, where a pair of cellphones — both his — briefly stopped buzzing on the table in front of him.
“I can just tell you I’m pretty lucky,” Rich said. “I have a very good life in Columbia, man. I’ve got a pretty good life. And I wouldn’t have this life if I didn’t play at the University of South Carolina. I get to work for the mayor, got him on speed dial. I have all-access to the University of South Carolina. I’m in with the politicians, I’m in with the local businessmen because I have the one thing that nobody else as a former student-athlete outside of Marcus Lattimore and George Rogers — has.
“And that’s access.”
Rich grew up in inner-city Columbia, won a state championship at C.A. Johnson High School and was a two-time captain while totaling the sixth-most assists in Gamecock history. He’s now the city’s recreation superintendent, a regular on local sports radio and is among Frank Martin’s closest allies.
“Whether you like the South Carolina Gamecocks or not,” Rich said, “Ray Tanner, Will Muschamp, Frank Martin, Mark Kingston, Dawn Staley are commodities in this city, and I have access to them. And that’s one of the things that George Glymph and Carl Williams and those guys always tried to convey to players about the importance of playing in state.
“You make relationships, you forge relationships that are sustainable, that are going to help you 20 years down the road, post-basketball.”
Rich last played for USC in 1995 and feels he is still benefiting from choosing the Gamecocks after his lone season at Western Carolina. Words Glymph and Williams offered to him as a teenager have come to a reality.
Glymph and Williams, legendary high school and AAU coaches in this area, were referenced by Martin at a news conference this summer when he was asked about today’s challenges of recruiting in-state talent.
“When George Glymph and Carl Williams were around,” said the seventh-year USC coach, “all these in-state kids wanted to be Gamecocks. All of a sudden that changed.”
Connected
The 1987-88 South Carolina roster featured five in-state players. The 1997-98 South Carolina roster featured eight in-state players. The 2007-08 USC roster had six. The 2017-18 roster had one, center Jason Cudd of Socastee.
Glymph (Eau Claire’s coach from 1974-96) and Williams (a state champion coach in the 1980s with A.C. Flora and in the ‘90s with Lower Richland) faced each other during the high school season, but teamed up in the summers to run an AAU team of the area’s top players. In 1987, their squad sponsored by Chick-fil-A and headlined by Stanley Roberts and Joe Rhett, won the AAU national championship.
“The time we were doing it in Columbia, we had about eight high school coaches and we coached the AAU teams,” Glymph said. “The high school coaches did it. We had five teams in Columbia and we would draw to see who had the No. 1 team, No. 2 team, No. 3 team and so forth. And it was very successful.
“That way, we were in charge of recruiting. It was up to the coaches, the high school coaches. It worked out really good for us.”
Glymph said he never steered any player to go to a certain school, but did always remember to note: “If your parents want to see you, you have to go somewhere close. And we have three first-rate teams in the state — South Carolina, Clemson and College of Charleston.”
Rhett, an all-state forward from Eau Claire, picked George Felton’s Gamecocks over finalists Georgia Tech, N.C. State, UNLV, Wake Forest and Clemson.
“We were always involved with the stuff at South Carolina,” said Rhett, who went on to score 1,142 points in garnet and black. “Coach Glymph was always around and a part of trying to help build everything around South Carolina. Just seeing that he had relationships and had a lot of confidence in George Felton at that time, it definitely helped.”
Rhett’s first team at USC included fellow natives Barry Manning, Jo Jo English and Michael Glover. Those Gamecocks went 19-11 and went to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 25 years. USC didn’t get back to the Big Dance until 1997. They were SEC regular-season champions then, a cast led by Irmo’s BJ McKie, Charleston’s Melvin Watson and Denmark’s Larry Davis.
Twenty years later, USC went to the Final Four with Lancaster’s Sindarius Thornwell, Columbia’s P.J. Dozier and Irmo’s Justin McKie.
“You see the success,” Rich said. “That’s why it’s important to be able to keep some of these players home.”
What’s changed?
Cudd was a member of Carolina’s 2017 recruiting class, and Hartsville’s Trae Hannibal is committed to the Gamecocks in the ’19 class. No natives signed to USC in ’18: Spartanburg’s Zion Williamson went to Duke, Charleston’s Aaron Nesmith went to Vanderbilt and Rock Hill’s D.J. Burns went to Tennessee. Those three were among the top 110 players in the country, according to 247Sports’ composite ranking.
From 2013-18, the state of South Carolina had 16 players fall in 247Sports’ top 200 composite rankings in their respective classes. The Gamecocks have signed three of them. Clemson signed one.
So what has changed?
For starters, that Chick-fil-A team no longer exists. The state’s best players began the trend of going elsewhere at an early age. Burns played AAU ball in Georgia. Juwan Gary, the Gray Collegiate Academy star who committed to Alabama last month, played on a Charlotte-based AAU team.
“A lot of these kids play high school here because they live in the state,” Martin said, “but they don’t even play on summer basketball teams from their own state. There’s something going on at the grassroots level here when these kids are listening to people outside the state. They just trust other people.”
Blast from the past
The state’s 2019 class is headlined by five-star prospect Josiah James, a 6-foot-6 point guard from Porter-Gaud High School in Charleston who plays for an AAU program (Trademark Properties) that’s run by John Pearson, head coach at Porter-Gaud, and Antoine Saunders, an assistant at Charleston Collegiate School.
It might be the state’s best reminder of what Glymph and Williams had going a few decades ago.
“The sponsorship (with TMP) came because our sponsor was hearing some horror stories with the kids that we were dealing out there on the AAU circuit,” Saunders said. “So we started our own program. We opened the door to who wants to be coached.
“But the egos are completely in check. We just want the best for our players and we want the best for South Carolina players to join us. Coach Saunders and I just enjoy doing it, we enjoy the talent coming through, we enjoy watching kids get better, we enjoy watching kids get what they want at the next level.”
Both USC and Clemson are among the final nine schools in contention for James.
“Those schools are important to us, no question,” Pearson said. “And it’s not just because we’re in South Carolina. Those are some quality folks at those schools. We have a great relationship.
“We would never steer a kid somewhere or steer a kid away from somewhere, but they (USC and Clemson) matter to us, they’re important to our kids, to our state. And they are quality, they are good folks.
“So if one of our kids joins them, good, we’ll take it.”
Push needed
When Thornwell, now a member of the Los Angeles Clippers, announced plans for his basketball camp earlier this summer, Martin made sure to share a tweet from the Gamecock great and add, “This is the power of staying home. Continuing to impact young people and his state. There is a reason there (are) people of all ages wearing (Thornwell’s) jersey around the state.”
Times are different, but when South Carolina’s best high school players become Gamecocks, life can still be pretty good. Rich was told this long ago.
But words from Glymph and Williams don’t echo like they used to.
“We need high school and AAU coaches to get excited about South Carolina basketball, excited about Clemson basketball,” Rich said. “We just don’t have that push from the adults that we need to have for the kids to understand the importance of playing for the in-state schools.”
This story was originally published August 4, 2018 at 6:10 PM.