One year later, Antonio Williams recruiting saga looms over Clemson-USC football game

Earlier this month, Clemson offensive coordinator Brandon Streeter found himself in a familiar spot: standing against a wall outside Memorial Stadium and singing the praises of Antonio Williams after his latest accomplishment.

Williams had just recorded a career-high 10 catches for 83 yards and a touchdown in a win against Louisville, and in a postgame interview session Streeter couldn’t stop raving about the true freshman slot receiver. Williams, he said, was confident. Fearless. Versatile. Improving.

Then, in a quiet moment, he made an admission.

“We kind of started the process a little bit late with him,” Streeter told The State. “And we probably should have been a little bit earlier with him — with offering him — because of how special he is. I mean, he had 10 catches tonight.”

In a nutshell, that’s the story of Williams’ recruitment.

He was lightning in a bottle at Irmo’s Dutch Fork High School, a four-star class of 2022 recruit coveted by many Power Five schools. Then, Clemson showed up fashionably late to the party with a scholarship offer and did, well, Clemson things.

But here’s your rivalry week twist, if you haven’t already deduced as much: Clemson isn’t the only major in-state football program that has an extended history with Williams.

The University of South Carolina is a stone’s throw from Dutch Fork, and the Gamecocks were on Williams as a college prospect from the get-go. They offered him early, built a strong relationship, picked up predictions to land his commitment, hosted him on an official visit, made his top schools list and remained a contender late into last fall … only for rival Clemson to swoop in with a late offer and land Williams 19 days later.

“Clemson is probably the best program in the country,” Williams said in September. “It was an honor to receive an offer. I don’t think at first I was like, ‘All right, I’m coming to Clemson.’ I still had to think about it a little bit. But it didn’t take long.”

All’s fair in love and recruiting, and Clemson-South Carolina has been a notably cheery rivalry under the joint coaching tenures of Dabo Swinney and Shane Beamer.

But as the Gamecocks and Tigers prepare for Saturday’s Palmetto Bowl, this much is clear: Not every wound from Williams’ 2021 recruiting process is completely healed.

USC the early favorite?

It’s hard to tell by the way he’s playing for Clemson right now, leading a College Football Playoff contender in catches and receiving yards, but Williams was a bit of a late bloomer.

While many top recruits start collecting scholarship offers as freshmen and sophomores, he didn’t receive his first Power Five offer, from Wake Forest, until early in his junior season.

The Gamecocks weren’t far behind, quickly picking up on the undeniable talent of a receiver who was, at that point, unranked by major recruiting websites and a bit undersized — but still making big play after big play for Dutch Fork, one of the state’s premier programs under legendary coach Tom Knotts.

The Gamecocks offered Williams a scholarship in November 2020. They were his first SEC offer and fourth overall from a Power Five school, and they beat the rush in a big way. By February, Williams was a consensus four-star recruit with his choice of a dozen major college football programs.

Even with coaching turnover, South Carolina’s early entrance into his recruitment paid dividends. Within a month of replacing Will Muschamp, who was fired after four seasons at USC, new coach Beamer re-offered Williams. The rising senior quickly bonded with wide receivers coach Justin Stepp, too. USC’s messaging was clear: Williams was their No. 1 priority at the position.

“To be honest, I feel like they want me the most,” Williams said of the Gamecocks in February 2021, and his frequent stops on campus showed the interest was mutual.

He watched their spring game from Williams-Brice Stadium in April and took unofficial visits in June and July, per SportsTalkSC. By the time Williams arrived on campus for his September 2021 official visit, the first he took during his senior year, the “hometown hero” buzz was tangible. Two 247Sports analysts had logged summer Crystal Ball predictions for Williams to eventually commit to South Carolina.

“He really had a lot of praise for the relationship that he had built with (Stepp),” said Joseph Hastings, who covered Williams’ recruitment extensively last year for On3.com. “It felt genuine … and look, he liked what they were doing in their 2021 campaign. With Shane Beamer, they were projected to be a three- or four-win team and completely exceeded expectations.”

But someone else was exceeding expectations, too: Williams himself. And that set the stage for a late-season recruiting battle between South Carolina and its biggest rival.

Here comes Clemson

As the contested catches and the dazzling punt returns piled up last fall, Streeter — Clemson’s quarterbacks coach at the time — found himself taking more and more of a liking to a certain 5-foot-11 dynamo from Irmo.

“You know how we are as far as recruiting: We’re really slow to offer guys,” Streeter said. “Antonio was a guy where it was like, ‘Man, we cannot not offer this guy,’ you know? He just continued to make plays and make plays and make plays.”

That’s not to say Clemson and Williams were unfamiliar. He grew up in the Upstate before moving to the Columbia area before high school. He started communicating with the Tigers as a junior. He watched their spring game, took an unofficial visit and camped at Clemson over the summer of 2021. His former Dutch Fork quarterback, Will Taylor, was a Clemson signee.

“We had our eye on him,” Streeter said.

What Clemson didn’t have was an active offer. The Tigers, as Streeter said, are slow to offer recruits and usually wait until they’re upperclassmen. They also issue very few scholarship offers in general, a statistic Swinney routinely touts to emphasize his program’s selectivity.

Heading into November 2021, Clemson had only offered four class of 2022 wide receivers, per 247Sports archives. In-state recruit Adam Randall had been committed to the Tigers for almost a year, while communication had long fallen off with Texas recruits Brenen Thompson (Texas) and Caleb Burton (Ohio State).

That left top 100 recruit Andre Greene Jr. of Richmond, Virginia, as the only uncommitted receiver with a Clemson offer a month before signing day — and Williams, while appreciative of Clemson wide receivers coach Tyler Grisham’s transparency, still waiting on a call he quietly coveted.

Then, things got interesting. A fall 2021 timeline:

• Nov. 5: Grisham visits Irmo to scout Williams during a Dutch Fork playoff game. Williams goes off for 170 all-purpose yards and three touchdowns in a blowout.

• Nov. 17: Greene commits to North Carolina over Clemson and Georgia, his other two announced finalists, in a ceremony at his high school.

• Nov. 20: Williams takes an unofficial visit to Clemson and watches the Tigers beat a top 15 Wake Forest team by 21 points in Memorial Stadium. After the game, Williams announces on Twitter that Clemson has formally offered him.

• Nov. 27: Clemson travels to Columbia and shuts out South Carolina 30-0 in Williams-Brice Stadium, extending a seven-game win streak over its biggest rival.

• Dec. 2: Swinney, Grisham and running backs coach C.J. Spiller conduct an in-home visit with the Williams family as the Dec. 15-17 early signing period approaches.

• Dec. 4: South Carolina puts the full-court press on Williams, sending six assistant coaches to Dutch Fork’s Class 5A state championship against Gaffney at nearby Benedict College. Beamer, anticipating an in-home visit with Williams the following Saturday, Dec. 11, skips the game to comply with an NCAA rule stating a head coach can only see a prospect once during a contact period. In the only loss of his prep career, Williams catches 12 passes for 155 yards.

• Dec. 9: Williams verbally commits to Clemson over USC, Auburn and Ole Miss via Twitter. Beamer’s in-home visit never happens.

South Carolina had been on Williams for over a year.

After an offer, Clemson only needed 19 days to seal the deal.

“He was a guy we really liked, and we were down the road on a couple kids that we thought we were gonna get,” Swinney said. “Grish did a great job of really just staying in there with Antonio. And, you know, things work out the way they’re supposed to.”

Rivalry rears its head

Williams, who graduated as the No. 62 overall recruit in his class, had nothing but kind words for South Carolina when he signed his national letter of intent with Clemson a week later.

“USC is a great program with a great fan base and coaches,” Williams said Dec. 15. “They have a great recruiting class and they’re headed in the right direction. It’s a great school.”

In return, plenty of South Carolina fans wished him well on social media. But a vocal minority of the fanbase wasn’t as thrilled with the decision, which Williams described as “the best (one) for me, my future and my family.” A scroll through his Twitter mentions last year said as much.

“Learn what the term priority means”

“Good luck sitting on that bench”

“Congrats! I’m glad that they missed on the 4 guys they wanted before you”

Frustration also spilled over into the coaching staff. A day after Williams committed to Clemson, Stepp, his former lead recruiter at USC, shared a Tweet from an area baseball coach: “One piece of advice I give my players regarding their recruitment. The coaches that liked you from the beginning are probably the ones you should be (the) most loyal to.”

“This is great advice,” Stepp wrote, adding an eyes emoji.

The recruiting saga took another late turn this summer when Williams — at this point a Clemson signee — showed up to the Gamecocks’ practice facility to watch Dutch Fork, his alma mater, compete in a 7-on-7 camp event on June 23.

A handful of USC players in attendance were unhappy with Williams’ presence and asked Beamer if Williams could be asked to leave, The State previously reported, citing a team source.

Beamer and Williams had a brief and cordial conversation, the source said, and Williams departed the facility without issue after being in attendance for at least two hours, according to observations from The State. Beamer later briefed Swinney and Knotts on the situation, the source said.

Williams’ parents weighed in on the situation via social media. His stepfather, Murphy Holloway, wrote on Twitter on June 23 that South Carolina “kicked my son out of the facility today when he was watching DF play. It’s all love tho.”

Holloway is a Dutch Fork and Ole Miss basketball alumnus who was also briefly enrolled at USC as a transfer player in 2010-11 but returned to Ole Miss before ever playing for the Gamecocks.

Courtney Holloway, Williams’ mother, disputed the team source’s characterization of that day’s events in a since-deleted Facebook post and later wrote on Twitter she was “seeing a lot of false statements that I won’t address from Twitter accounts with ZERO CREDIBILITY.”

“See y’all in November,” she wrote, adding orange and purple heart emojis.

’That’s what sold it for us’

Now November is here, and Williams, who described committing to Clemson as “probably the best decision I’ve made in my life,” is thriving for the ACC championship-bound Tigers.

Williams — who didn’t enroll until the summer so he could play basketball for Dutch Fork — leads Clemson with 48 catches for 512 yards through 11 games. Tight end Davis Allen and receiver Joseph Ngata are second in those categories with 32 catches and 389 yards, respectively.

“That little Antonio,” as Swinney has lovingly called him, keeps showing up in big moments: an opportune kick return against Wake Forest, a long TD against Florida State, a much-needed punt return against Boston College, a freshman record-tying 10 catches against Louisville.

Come Saturday, he’ll have a chance to do it again versus South Carolina, which made this annual rivalry game all the more interesting after upsetting Tennessee.

After an admittedly late offer and an 11th-hour recruiting process, count Swinney and Streeter among the many on Clemson’s staff happy to have Williams on their side of this 119th iteration of the Palmetto Bowl.

“Any time you get a kid on campus a couple of times, I mean, they’re gonna feel it, they’re gonna see it and, and, heck, they know that we’re gonna win a lot of games,” Streeter said. “They know we’ve got a great culture ... that’s what sold it for us.

“Really, I think in the end he just saw the opportunity here,” Swinney said. “And you see what he’s doing ... I can’t imagine he’s not at least a freshman all-conference guy. He’s had a great, great year for us and (he’s) got a bright future ahead.”