It took less than ten hours for chaos to find Columbia. One late-night phone call, a sudden departure, and a coaching staff scramble, all sparked by what Shane Beamer described as an unusual move that left South Carolina stunned, as the Gamecocks’ head coach broke his silence about the recent staff poaching move by the new LSU head coach, Lane Kiffin.

“It happened fast, as you guys know.” Shane Beamer stated during a recent media scrum while addressing Sterling Lucas’s departure from South Carolina, deeming it a bit unusual. “Got a call on a Thursday night after 11 PM from the previous coach that was here, telling me that he had been offered a job at another school, and by 9 AM the next morning, he was gone

“Usually you get a phone call from the head coach of the school, kind of giving you a heads-up that he’s interested in maybe talking to one of your coaches or things like that, that didn’t happen, which again, here’s no rule that has to happen, but it’s kind of an unspoken rule,” Beamer further stated. “So didn’t hear anything from the other school, didn’t hear anything from the previous coach until he called to tell me that he had been offered a job.”

Without much of a warning or even a courtesy, Lane Kiffin poached one of Beamer’s top assistants days before the Gamecocks started planning their off-season. The timing surely couldn’t have been worse, but in the chaos of his exit, Beamer and his defensive coordinator wasted no time at all. By the morning that came around, discussions for the best candidate went underway, only for them to arrive at Deion Barnes.

“Immediately, Clayton White and I got together to kind of share some names, get some initial thoughts, some guys I had in mind, some guys that he had in mind. But immediately, Clayton said to me, Deion Barnes,” Shane Beamer added.

Known for his energetic recruiting and player development shops, Deion Barnes has a resume built on disciplined and aggressive line play. He aligns perfectly with what Clayton White and Shane Beamer envisioned for South Carolina’s front seven. On the other hand, Lane Kiffin has broken the silence regarding claims of poaching staff members.

Lane Kiffin responds to poaching claims

The new LSU Tigers’ head coach has been a busy customer, making quite a few hires for his coaching staff. He’s got a staff with includes the likes of Joe Cox, Charlie Weis Jr., Kevin Smith, George McDonald, Sawyer Jordan, and Dane Stevens. But in the wake of Sterling Lucas’ addition to the team, the ‘poaching’ claims came to haunt Lane Kiffin, which he doesn’t appear to have taken too kindly.

Lane Kiffin has made it clear that what he did was purely business. Other than that, he insinuated that Sterling Lucas’s hiring was about getting the right candidate for the job. Taking to X, Kiffin made his feelings clear, tweeting, “Poaching’ is apparently the same thing as hiring a LSU that was not retained.”

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As per Lane Kiffin’s response, it appears that he seemed to have wanted to bring in his own people instead of keeping some of the old staffers hired by his team. However, Sterling Lucas’ departure might end up defining South Carolina’s offseason. Deion Barnes inherits both urgency and the opportunity, and he has a chance to help the program make its biggest bounce yet.