How USC MBB went from SEC’s lowest NIL fund to ‘substantially’ bigger budget
Less than a month after starting as South Carolina’s new athletic director, Jeremiah Donati had to find answers about his men’s basketball team.
Why were the Gamecocks so bad? How did this team that won 26 games and went to the NCAA Tournament just a year ago fall off so fast, ultimately starting SEC play with 13 straight losses? Was it coach Lamont Paris? The players? The competition?
“The question came up: It’s not a matter if Lamont’s coming back. It’s how can I — how can we — better support him?” Donati told 107.5 The Game in a late-January radio interview. USC needed to start “that conversation about what NIL looks like in the spring, then into rev sharing.”
The problem, Donati quickly learned, was largely monetary.
“Candidly, (Paris) needed more NIL support,” Donati recently told The State. “We had one of the lower budgets in the SEC. And while that is not the only reason why we didn’t see the results we had hoped, it was a significant factor.”
South Carolina did not just have one of the lower budgets in the conference. Per On3 Sports’ LSU publication, and confirmed by a USC team source, the Gamecocks had the smallest NIL fund in the SEC last season, a pool of less than $2 million for its entire roster.
As he worked to bolster the name, image and likeness budget of the men’s basketball team, Donati admitted he did not move money from one sport to another but sought “additional support” to help bring Paris’ team back to competitiveness.
“We’ve worked tirelessly since then to increase that (NIL budget) and put them in a much better position,” Donati told The State. “It will be substantially more than it was last year.”
Donati and others in the athletic department kept mum on the exact financials — given that any number could theoretically be used against them in recruiting — but whatever the ultimate NIL allotment jumped to, it has been enough to lure talent.
“You’re not going to win — we’re not trying to win (NIL battles), but you’ve at least got to be in the ball field,” said Carey Rich, USC’s special assistant to the head coach. “Last year, we were standing outside the ball field looking over the fence, trying to get in to play.
“Well now,” Rich continued, “we’re in the field. We’re not winning (in) the field, but we’re at least in the ball field.”
South Carolina overhauls its roster
Since USC finished with a 12-20 record, Paris and his staff have basically flipped the entire roster. A half-dozen guys from last year’s team — including Cam Scott and Jamarii Thomas — are in the transfer portal. Three more are out of eligibility — though Myles Stute has applied for a waiver to play an additional year.
The Gamecocks signed a quartet of freshmen — headlined by phenom Eli Ellis, a four-star internet sensation who already has his own Under Armour commercial.
And in just the past week, South Carolina has added four highly-sought-after transfers: C Christ Essandoko (Providence), G Treysen Eaglestaff (North Dakota), G Kobe Knox (South Florida) and former Gamecock G Meechie Johnson (Ohio State).
Eaglestaff, who said he canceled visits to Gonzaga, Kansas and Kentucky to commit to the Gamecocks, did not place NIL as the top priority in his recruitment but noted that South Carolina was up there money-wise with the blue bloods.
“Absolutely. They could definitely compete with anyone that was hitting me up,” Eaglestaff told The State about USC’s NIL capacity. “From what I heard, too, it got a lot better.”
And what might that NIL figure look like? It’s hard to know for sure — especially without the salary cap that’s expected to come on July 1 if the House Settlement goes through.
But during a Monday radio appearance on Sirius XM radio with ESPN’s Peter Burns, Paris said that an average compensation for an SEC starter “begins with a ‘M’ ” — as in million.
Does that mean every SEC starter is making at least $1 million or just the elite transfers coming into an SEC program? It’s hard to know. But what we do know if the best players in the country are making well beyond that. Or can — if they get lured into the portal.
“Collin Murray-Boyles, who has no interest in going anywhere,” Paris said on the radio show, “got an offer for $2.5 million from someone in our conference who was playing in the NCAA Tournament.”
It’s unclear how close South Carolina could come to matching that offer for Murray-Boyles. It’s also still unclear if he’s going to return to college or declare for the NBA Draft, where a number of mock drafts project him to be a lottery pick.
But South Carolina will try its hardest to keep Murray-Boyles in the garnet and black. USC will at least be in, as Rich says, the ball field. And that, for now, is a success.
South Carolina basketball 2025-26 roster outlook
Among scholarship players
- Out of eligibility (3): G Jacobi Wright, F Myles Stute (pursuing a waiver to be eligible for next year), F Benjamin Bosmans-Verdonk
- Transferring away (6): G Austin Herro, G Zach Davis, G Arden Conyers (Charlotte), G Jamarii Thomas, G Cam Scott, F Nick Pringle
- NBA Draft decision (1): F Collin Murray-Boyles
- Incoming transfers (4): C Christ Essandoko (Providence), G Treysen Eaglestaff (North Dakota), Kobe Knox (South Florida), Meechie Johnson (Ohio State)
- Returning (3): G Morris Ugusuk, C Jordan Butler, F Okku Federiko
- Incoming freshmen (4): G Eli Ellis, G Grant Polk, F EJ Walker, F Hayden Assemian
