South Carolina Recruiting: Shaq Davidson Makes July SB Nation All-SEC Recruit Team

As you might have seen, SB Nation recruiting guru Bud Elliott has been compiling an All-SEC Recruit Team to identify the best committed recruits at each position. South Carolina had one of the three wide receivers with Shaq Davidson. Davidson has a composite 247 rating of .953 and is rated as the 11th best wide-out in the nation. Unfortunately, Bryson Allen-Williams lost the spot he earned in last month's list to a crowded field of top SEC linebackers. The Gamecocks have a chance to earn another spot on the list, though, if they can get a commitment from OL Donell Stanley, who would currently rank among the best OL commits.

As Elliott notes, one of the interesting takeaways from this list regards the quality of the classes at Tennessee and Kentucky:

It's interesting to see that Tennessee and Kentucky, which various recruiting websites designated with No. 1 recruiting class status in May and June, respectively, are behind the more traditional powers in terms of bringing in elite recruits. Kentucky doesn't even have a single player on the team!

There's been a bit of hand-wringing from Carolina fans regarding whether these two programs are on the rise considering their highly rated recruiting classes, but based on what this list tells us, it's probably a bit early to call either program a rising juggernaut. Both sent out tons of offers and are signing huge classes this year as they initiate program overhauls. Size is factored into the team rankings, and it can make a particularly big difference early in the process, when some teams have committed more of their classes than others. Both programs have over 20 players committed, with Tennessee nearly full at 24. Neither program, though, is among the elite (Alabama, Georgia, etc.) in terms of average star rankings per player. Kentucky comes in below us, and Tennessee only slightly ahead of us, and as we have more spots left and a few remaining highly rated prospects in play (such as Stanley and Dante Sawyer), we could easily close the gap with the Vols. This is all to say that we're still recruiting better than Kentucky and roughly comparable to Tennessee by this very important metric.