Vols’ Hyatt happy to be back home
Tennessee junior receiver Jalin Hyatt will have some extra incentive when the No. 5 Volunteers play at South Carolina on Saturday night.
It will be a homecoming game for Hyatt, who leads the SEC with 58 catches for 1,116 yards and a Tennessee-record 15 touchdowns.
Hyatt played at Dutch Fork High School in Irmo, S.C., which is 10 miles northwest of the South Carolina campus in Columbia.
Despite Hyatt being a 4-star prospect and ranked the nation’s No. 33 receiver by 247Sports, he wasn’t offered a scholarship by South Carolina or Clemson.
“I went to camps at Clemson and South Carolina just to showcase my skills,” Hyatt told ESPN.com reporter Chris Low earlier this season. “They just kept saying, ‘We’ll see. We’ll see.’ But nothing ever came of it.”
While Hyatt showed elite speed in camps, he was around 160 pounds and his lack of weight was a concern to Will Muschamp, the Gamecocks’ coach at the time who is now Georgia’s defensive coordinator.
“It sucked not getting an offer from your hometown school because I feel like they should be the first ones to offer,” Hyatt told ESPN. com. “But they never did, and I know why. Things work out the way they’re supposed to, and I’m glad they thought I was too small.
“It helped lead me here, and look at what all I would have missed.”
According to Low’s story, after Muschamp watched Hyatt run a 40-yard dash, he said, “Man, you’re fast, but you need to eat more peanut butter.”
Shane Beamer, in his second season as South Carolina’s coach, has stressed this week he was not leading the program when Hyatt wasn’t offered a scholarship.
At the time, Beamer was an assistant at Oklahoma for Lincoln Riley, who is now USC’s coach.
“Jalin Hyatt is a phenomenal football player,” Beamer said Tuesday at this weekly news conference. “I was coaching at the University of Oklahoma when he graduated and chose to go to Tennessee.
“I hope people know that. I have certainly heard from people about what an idiot I am that I didn’t recruit Jalin Hyatt.
“Blame Lincoln Riley at Southern Cal because we didn’t recruit him at Oklahoma and whoever else here. Certainly, he is a fantastic player. What a year he is having and what a threat he is outside on the perimeter also.”
Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker was asked if he thinks Hyatt has extra motivation for the South Carolina game.
“Yeah, for sure,” Hooker said. “J. Hyatt is playing very smart and savvy and it’s a cool thing to go home and have family and friends there and put on a show. So I’m excited to see him do his thing.”