Could this South Carolina commit be the steal of NC's 2022 basketball recruiting class?

RALEIGH – As a senior, Daniel Hankins-Sanford racked up all-conference and all-state honors galore, led his team deep into the playoffs and emerged as a nationally ranked basketball recruit in the 2022 class.

Come next fall, though, the bouncy Chambers High School forward — one of North Carolina prep basketball’s most productive players during the 2021-22 season — will be playing his college ball at the University of South Carolina, which signed him last fall and held onto him despite a coaching change.

Which begs the question: Did the Hoop State let one get away?

Rod Bridgers, the owner/founder of the Hoop State Network, certainly thinks so.

“He’s going to be one of those kids where you go see him in the SEC next year and think: ‘How in the hell did he slip through the cracks like that?’” Bridgers said last month, laughing. “It happens every year.”

Indeed, the lack of in-state attention surrounding Hankins-Sanford, especially at a high-major level, opened the door for USC to make what’s looking like more and more of a smart pick-up for next fall.

In today’s increasingly wide-open college game, adding a 6-foot-7 wing who can hang with the best of them athletically and waffle between the small forward and power forward spots is never a bad thing.

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Speaking after the Hoop State Network’s Last Dance showcase event in April, Hankins-Sanford kept the focus on joining the Gamecocks this summer and admitted: “I actually don’t even know where I’m ranked.” Broadly speaking, though, he has indulged in the surprising sleeper status surrounding him.

“I kind of look at it as motivation,” Hankins-Sanford said.

While other top in-state 2022 recruits such as Combine Academy’s Jayden Epps, Asheville Christian’s De’Ante Green and Combine Academy’s Patrick Wessler were mainstays in the 247Sports composite rankings, Hankins-Sanford is relatively new for a Power Five commit. He didn’t appear until January.

Now he heads to Columbia as the No. 4 recruit in North Carolina, the No. 29 power forward in the class and the No. 167 overall recruit in the 2022 class, which got its final rankings update this Wednesday.

In the Top247, he’s even higher: No. 3 in the state, No. 25 at his position, No. 134 overall.

In a way, Hankins-Sanford’s late-season rankings rise mimicked his development over four seasons at Charlotte's Chambers High: under the radar, but always steady. After an abbreviated junior year in which he put up 21.4 points and 9.9 rebounds per game, Power Five attention remained low for the one-time football player.

But former coach Frank Martin’s South Carolina staff saw enough to offer Hankins-Sanford in September 2021, joining mid-major programs such as ECU, Murray State and Radford among his 10 scholarships.

East Tennessee State and Georgia Southern also made strong pushes for Hankins-Sanford, a three-star recruit, before he announced his South Carolina pledge just ahead of November’s early signing period.

“I loved the Frank Martin coaching staff,” Hankins-Sanford said. “That’s what brought me in.”

With his national letter of intent signed, Hankins-Sanford proceeded to have the best season of his prep career. His scoring average dipped slightly (that was mostly attributable to four-star 2023 point guard Jaylen Curry joining the Chambers roster), he but improved drastically in other spots for the Cougars.

Hankins-Sanford averaged 16.5 points, 7.9 rebounds, 1.9 steals, 1.8 assists and 1.8 blocks per game across 28 contest for Chambers. He also shot 47% from the field, 26% on 3-pointers (a part of his game he wants to keep growing) and a career-high 61% on free throws while recording 11 doubles-doubles.

In the Queen City 3A/4A Conference, Hankins-Sanford, the conference’s player of the year, was even better at 21.2 points and 8.5 rebounds per game. Chambers went 12-0 in conference and 22-7 overall and advanced to the NCHSAA 4A quarterfinals before losing to eventual state champion Weddington.

The North Carolina Basketball Coaches Association also named Hankins-Sanford its District 9 player of the year and a first-team all-state selection. But as those awards rolled in, so did more pressing news, delivered to Hankins-Sanford via ESPN app while he was sitting in his fourth-period class on March 14.

South Carolina was firing Martin after 10 seasons.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” Hankins-Sanford said.

He also lost his lead recruiter, as former South Carolina assistant Brian Steele followed Martin to his next job at UMass. And since the school fired Martin amid a recruiting dead period, Hankins-Sanford had few options besides watching USC’s subsequent coaching search and transfer portal movement from afar.

“Who are the options for coaches? I’d do my research on those guys,” he said. “And who’s coming in from the portal? All that type of stuff.”

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He ended up loving his future school’s choice. South Carolina officially hired former Chattanooga coach Lamont Paris on March 24, and one of his first orders of business was connecting with the 2022 recruit.

Hankins-Sanford was looking for clarity and “it didn’t take long,” he said. “I just wanted to get a better understanding of (Paris’) plan and what he wanted to do. So once he confirmed it, it was a green light.”

Hankins-Sanford will enroll at South Carolina later this summer. He’ll mostly play small forward and power forward for Paris, he said, while continuing to work on shooting, dribbling and decision-making.

“I’m ready to absorb all of that the knowledge,” he said. “And the fans, from what I see, are 100% in: they wanted me at South Carolina as bad as I wanted to be at South Carolina. So I'm ready to get to it.”

It’s that combination of talent and work ethic, Bridgers said, that made Hankins-Sanford “unbelievable” at Chambers and might have a few North Carolina colleges wishing they could hit rewind come 2022-23.

“He’s going to do great things at South Carolina,” Bridgers said.

Chapel Fowler is a recruiting reporter for The Fayetteville Observer and the USA TODAY Network. Reach him by email at cfowler@gannett.com or on Twitter at @chapelfowler.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Top NC basketball recruit Daniel Hankins-Sanford to play for USC