South Carolina Recruiting: Drew Barker to Announce this Friday

The big news in Carolina recruiting this week is that Hebron, KY prospect Drew Barker will be announcing his college choice this Friday, May 10th. Barker is a high four-star QB with a composite 247 ranking as the nation's 87th-best player. He's listed as a pro-style QB and certainly has the size and arm strength that go along with that designation, but he's also mobile and has experience running the read-option. He'd be a good fit for what we want to do.

Barker will be choosing between South Carolina and Kentucky. There's been some noise regarding Tennessee getting in on his recruitment, but there's been no indication that the Vols are being seriously considered. The other team that's been talked about in relation to Barker is Ohio St. It's been rumored that the Buckeyes recently gauged interest from Barker, but scuttlebutt is that while Barker would have likely been interested in playing for the near-home Buckeyes, the fact that they didn't have him at the top of their list and waited until they missed on other prospects to get in touch with him rubbed him the wrong way.

As the story with OSU suggests, Barker is big on relationships and respect, and one of the big things Carolina has going for it is that Steve Spurrier and his staff have been all over Barker from the very beginning. Kentucky has, too, ever since Mark Stoops came on campus, and with UK being the hometown team and enjoying a little bit of hype with the new coach, UK has piqued Barker's interest in recent weeks.

Basically, the question for Barker is whether he wants to stay home and play for Kentucky and try to help Stoops build his program, or whether he wants to go further away and play for a more established program. As far as I can tell, chances for early playing time will be fairly similar. Obviously, Kentucky hasn't had good QB play in recent years, but the program actually has a couple of good prospects on the depth chart, while Barker will have to compete with Connor Mitch and maybe Brendan Nosovitch if he comes to Carolina.

It's a pretty close call. One could see why he could go either way. Where do you think Barker ends up?