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Welcome to The Final Cockdown’s Wide Receiver week! We go down the depth chart and take a look at who will be catching touchdowns from Jake Bentley this year. Here’s a list of who you can expect to read about in the coming days:
Bryan Edwards | Deebo Samuel | Terry Googer | Dreak Davis & Korey Banks | Chad Terrell | Chavis Dawkins | Ortre Smith & Shi Smith
Per 247Sports, the top two recruits in the state of South Carolina in 2017 were Ortre Smith and Shi Smith — a pair of wide receiver who played their prep ball three hours from each other on opposite sides of the state. Shi from Union, a remote town in the upstate, and Ortre from Mount Pleasant, a suburb of Charleston.
#18 Ortre Smith
Freshman / 6’4’’ / 229 / Mount Pleasant, S.C. / Wando
Ortre was an early enrollee after missing part of his senior year due to an ankle injury, but even with that was a finalist for South Carolina’s Mr. Football award and was named “Back of the year” by the SCFCA. He was the No. 1 prep prospect out of the state and is South Carolina’s largest wide receiver as an 18 year-old.
2016 stats: 37 catches, 448 yards, two TDs; 29 tackles, INT
Recruitment: Four-star recruit; Alabama, Clemson, Florida State, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Georgia, Tennessee, Ole Miss, West Virginia and South Carolina. Committed to SC on Sept. 11, 2016.
Selected highlight: Here are a couple of nice grabs Ortre made before he got hurt
#11 Shi Smith
Freshman / 5’10’’ / 181 / Union, S.C. / Union
Even as Ortre enrolled earlier, Shi committed to the Gamecocks back in June of 2016. Funny as it is, a staffer at a Clemson camp told Shi to switch from quarterback to wide receiver — now the South Carolina Gamecocks will reap the benefits of his talents. As a body mold, Shi is the polar opposite of Ortre — small, shifty and quick.
2016 stats: N/A
Recruitment: Four-star recruit; Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma, North Carolina, NC State, Tennessee and South Carolina. Committed to SC on Jun. 11, 2016.
Selected highlight: Shi is an incredibly versatile player, so check out the kind of range he has here