Accolades and hype surrounded Cam Scott throughout his high school basketball career.
A native of Lexington, South Carolina, Scott averaged 19.2 points, six rebounds, and 2.4 steals per game during his junior season and averaged 22.0 point, 6.4 rebounds and 3.3 steals per game in his senior season.
Future Gamecock Cam Scott was rewarded for his efforts by being named the South Carolina Gatorade Player of the Year during both his junior and senior campaigns, in addition to finishing his career at Lexington High School as the program's leading point scorer and setting a school record four All-State selections.
Scott’s senior season helped him rise in national recruiting ranking as 247Sports tabbed him as the No. 50 prospect nationwide in the class of 2024.
Now a freshman on South Carolina's men's basketball team, Scott said he's not fazed by the pressure, despite being the highest-ranked player from Palmetto State in his recruiting class.
“Those rankings are high school rankings and then once you come to the college atmosphere, the college lifestyle, it's a completely different game," Scott said. “Anybody can go up even if you earn rank. You could come out and be the best player in the country.”
Scott said he is now looking forward to a fresh start with the Gamecocks.
The 6-foot-6 guard received more than a dozen offers dating back to 2021, and he initially committed to Texas in August 2023 before his senior season year of high school. But in April 2024, he de-committed from the Longhorns before committing verbally pledging to join South Carolina four days later.
Lexington, Scott's hometown, is located just over 10 miles away from Columbia. Scott said playing for a team so close to home was a big pull for him.
Scott isn't the only player on the Gamecock men's basketball team who plays close to home. Sophomore forward Collin Murray-Boyles, a Columbia native who previously played at AC Flora High School, said he is familiar with Scott's game, as both players saw each other on the court before even arriving at USC.
"I've grown up with them (Scott)" Murray-Boyles said. "I know how they play, I've played with them, played against them, I know their tendencies, and I know how to get them better because of that."
In committing to South Carolina, Scott joined a Gamecocks roster with lots of in-state talent. Murray-Boyles, graduate student forward Nick Pringle (a transfer from Alabama), sophomore forward Jordan Butler (a transfer from Missouri) and more players and staff are from the Palmetto State.
“Being able to come in and go to war with these guys every day, we all take a different type of pride just playing for South Carolina,” Scott said. "Being able to see where we lie on the floor and putting our pieces together, it's honestly amazing.”
South Carolina also possesses veteran leadership in the form of Pringle, graduate student forward Benjamin Bosmans-Verdonk and senior guards Jacobi Wright, Jamarii Thomas and Myles Stute.
“Nick, Jacobi, Jamarii,... they've just been taking me under the wing, correcting me on the little things that they see, even if it ends in a good result, just things that I can do to tweak and help myself become a little bit better,” Scott said.
Scott has demonstrated improvement in his game in his brief time with the program, Stute said.
"There has been a lot growth, especially within guys like (junior guard) Zach Davis and Cam Scott — just from day one, from the time they stepped foot on campus in the summer," Stute said.
The Gamecocks are coming off one of its most memorable seasons in program history, where it was projected to finish last in the conference during the preseason and ended the campaign with an NCAA tournament berth.
South Carolina is projected to finish in the bottom half of a 16-team SEC in 2024-25, according to the conference's preseason poll. But the Gamecocks don't have to change much to experience that level of success again, Scott said.
“We don't believe in having a chip on our shoulder. We have a strategy ... We have a place to really hone in on playing, and we've been sticking to it since day one,” Scott said. “We've established what our play style was gonna be, how we were gonna play and what we all had to do to get there. And we know we've just been diving in on that every day.”
Scott said this year's South Carolina squad has the talent to go on a similar run this upcoming season.
“A lot of people may or may not see it, or you may or may not hear about it, but we're a very skilled team,” Scott said. “And the way that we compete and practice and challenge each other from the first guy to the last guy, we really make each other better each and every day.”
Scott and the Gamecocks will begin their regular season on Monday, Nov. 4 in a matchup against North Florida at Colonial Life Arena. Tip-off is set for 7 p.m.