Elite 5-star OL schedules first official visit, and it's to South Carolina

South Carolina just pulled a heavyweight recruiting development. Five-star interior offensive lineman Maxwell Hiller, a true blue-chip talent in the Class of 2027, has scheduled his first official visit to the University of South Carolina. His planned visit will be from June 19th through June 21st. That’s a three-day window where the Gamecock coaching staff will get its best shot yet at impressing one of the nation’s most coveted prospects.

Hiller is an absolute anchor on the 2027 recruiting board. According to the most current 247Sports rankings, he checks in as:
• No. 4 player in the nation
• No. 1 interior offensive lineman in the class
• No.1 player in the state of Pennsylvania

These aren’t mediocre accolades, they mark him as a generational interior blocker with elite size at 6-foot-5, approximately 300 pounds. Hiller has the athletic profile to be an early starter in the trenches.

Why This Matters For South Carolina

What makes his visit to Columbia big isn’t just the numbers, but the timing. This is Hiller’s first planned OV. It puts South Carolina’s offensive line coaches and recruiting leadership squarely in the driver’s seat as the first Power 5 program to host him officially.

This is especially important as South Carolina enters this recruitment with a new offensive line coach in Randy Clements, who replaced Lonnie Teasley after Teasley was fired midway through the season. Teasley had been the primary recruiter on Hiller for the Gamecocks and had spent years building that relationship. Hiller has acknowledged that the coaching change does impact things, slightly.

“A little bit, yes,” Hiller told The Post and Courier. “I had really good relationships with everybody at South Carolina. Obviously, I still have a really good relationship with everybody at South Carolina. I still feel the same about South Carolina, it’s just that I have to build these relationships back up with these new coaches and the new staff members.”

It will be a relationship rebuild on both sides, and official visits are where those are won or lost. Clements and Hiller have already been in contact, and the fact that South Carolina still landed Hiller’s first OV speaks volumes about where the Gamecocks stand even amid staff turnovers.

Interior offensive linemen like Hiller don’t come around often. These kinds of players are program builders, the kind you run behind in November when the SEC slate turns into a fistfight. If this visit goes the way South Carolina hopes, it could turn uncertainty into momentum.