Inside the commitment: Kendall Daniels Jr.

Norfolk (Va.) Maury class of 2025 four-star safety Kendall Daniels Jr. committed to South Carolina on Friday afternoon giving the Gamecocks a nice recruiting win going into what could be a big weekend on the trail.

GamecockCentral provides an in-depth analysis of the pickup below.

The recruitment

Let’s get it out of the way — yes, Kendall Daniels was one of the past #WelcomeHomes. The four-star DB committed to Shane Beamer and Co. on the weekend of the spring game and was expected to go public that Sunday. But Sunday came and went without a pledge anywhere.

We anticipated, based on some rumblings, that Daniels might commit sometime in May but that didn’t happen either.

Carolina still appeared to have the cards here but that edge may have faded some as other programs were able to firmly enter the mix during the time between April and now.

Once the Gamecocks were able to get Daniels back on campus for his official visit we felt strongly about their chances of landing him based on the feedback from that weekend, it was just a matter of getting to the finish line.

The relationships here were big as Torrian Gray and the recruiting staff were able to hold off Virginia Tech to land Daniels.

The evaluation

Listed at 6-foot-3, 195-pounds, Daniels appears even taller than that and may have hit another growth spurt since he was last measured.

A standout at Virginia power Maury, which went undefeated last year, Daniels has the length that Torrian Gray covets in all of his targets.

Daniels is a true cover free safety who can play center field and cover lots of ground. He’s a rangy prospect who has a different skillset than some of the inside-the-box strong safety types the Gamecocks have landed as of late and that should give him the opportunity to get on the field early.

There’s also a sense here that Daniels still has yet to come even close to filling out his frame and that’s something he should be able to do at the next level.

Even as a long, somewhat wiry prospect at the high school level, Daniels shows on film the ability and willingness to come down and fill the alleys with physicality. It’s also interesting that the first play on his junior highlight tape is of him blocking a punt.

A consensus four-star prospect on all four major sites, Daniels is ranked as the No. 285 prospect in the country according to the On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average of all four major recruiting services. He is tabbed as the seventh-best prospect in the state of Virginia and as the country’s 24th-best safety prospect.

What’s next?

With the commitment of Daniels to South Carolina and Loganza Heyward to Tennessee in the last week, the Gamecocks’ known, high priority defensive backs targets have announced their decisions.

Daniels joins three-stars Damarcus Leach and Christopher Hatfield in the South Carolina defensive back class.

The Gamecocks will certainly continue to track and evaluate prospects through their senior seasons in an effort to see if there are others they should move on.

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