South Carolina Basketball: Ranking the top-12 centers in Gamecock history
By Kevin Miller
South Carolina Basketball’s No. 7 Greatest Center of All-Time:
Jim Slaughter
Jim Slaughter (1947-1951) was the first great Gamecock center. Playing in an era in which accurate statistics are hard to find, Slaughter averaged around 20 points per night during his career. At 6’9″, he was billed as the biggest man in the Southern Conference in the late 1940s, and the smaller opponents couldn’t stop him.
The Roanoke, Virginia native made an All-American squad and two All-Southern Conference teams in his four years as a Gamecock, and he turned that collegiate success into a brief professional career. In the 1951 NBA Draft, Slaughter went to the Baltimore Bullets and played for two seasons with the Bullets and the Washington Capitols.