The South Carolina Gamecocks got a bit of bad news on Tuesday. It has been confirmed by GoGamecocks.com that cornerback Jamari Smith will miss the entire 2014 season with a broken foot.
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Smith suffered the injury during a scrimmage over the weekend.
The ninth ranked Gamecocks are a bit short at the position anyway, where they lost both starters from last season’s 11-2 Citrus Bowl winning team. Smith was expected to compete for playing time with incoming freshmen Al Harris Jr, Wesley Green, and Chris Lammons.
Smith, a sophomore from Jacksonville, Florida, has flipped from running back to cornerback once already in his tenure at South Carolina.
As a freshman, he enrolled as a running back, then moved to cornerback a week into fall camp. Then with injuries mounting in the backfield, he switched back to running back. He ran for 103 yards on ten carries in the 70-10 thrashing of Coastal Carolina last year.
He finished the season with 108 rushing yards on 14 carries.
This spring he moved back to cornerback in an effort to get on the field sooner. Since both starting slots were wide open, Smith was competing for one of them.
Coming out of Fletcher High School in Neptune Beach, Florida, Smith was a three star running back recruit, and ranked in the top 100 prospects in the state of Florida. He drew he drew a dozen other scholarship offers before deciding to enroll at South Carolina.
The Gamecocks are expected to keep Smith at cornerback, but we all know how much things can change in a year in college football. We will have to wait until next year to see where he fits in.