On Monday, South Carolina basketball picked up an intriguing commitment. Class of 2025 wing Lance Piper announced a surprise commitment to play for Lamont Paris and the Gamecocks. The news was broken on Twitter by Ari Rosenfeld, the Scouting Director at Elite High School Recruiting.
2025 @phelpshoops/@NH_Lightning swingman Lance Piper has committed to South Carolina, where he’ll reclassify and enroll in 2024.
— Ari Rosenfeld (@ARosenfeldHoops) June 5, 2023
Lengthy wing with dynamic shotmaking flashes originally from NY pic.twitter.com/j3vw1c8Yca
Piper attends the Phelps School in Malverne, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. He is originally from New York.
As a player, Piper is an interesting prospect. In the 8th grade in 2019, he went viral when someone posted a highlight reel from when he played in a middle school tournament.
That was four years ago, though, so much has changed about Piper’s game (and his opponents’ games) since then. However, the long athlete has a high ceiling offensively as his length, athleticism, and shooting touch are coveted traits.
At 6’6″ tall, Piper has the height to play the small forward spot but profiles best as a tall shooting guard. He is thin, but the Gamecocks have seen positive results from thin guards with long wingspans in recent years (AJ Lawson and PJ Dozier come to mind).
Piper plans to reclassify from the 2025 recruiting class to the 2024 class and enroll next year. If he follows through with reclassifying, he will join 4-star Finnish forward Okku Federiko in the class for the Gamecocks. Paris and his staff are also recruiting several other 2024 prospects, including Georgia wing Derrion Reid and in-state products Elijah Crawford and 5-star Cam Scott.
Older South Carolina basketball fans will notice that Piper is originally from New York and instantly reminisce on the Frank McGuire era. The greatest coach to ever walk the sidelines for South Carolina basketball established a pipeline from the Big Apple to Columbia, South Carolina, and some of the best players in Gamecock history (especially scoring guards) came from New York.
Gamecock fans will be hopeful that Piper can revive that old tradition and help bring South Carolina basketball back to the world of college basketball relevance.