South Carolina football quarterback Ryan Hilinski entered the NCAA Transfer Portal. A second year, Hilinski played in two games this season and completed 4 of 6 passes for 34 yards. He saw action against Vanderbilt and Texas A&M this season, coming out of a 2019 campaign, where he was the team’s fullback.
Hilinski, a former four-star contender who came from California to Carolina, found himself at the top of the depth chart after the past year Jake Bentley broke his foot in the first game of the 2019 season. Hilinski started the rest of the season for the Gamecocks and went 4-7 as a full-back.
Hilinski completed 58.1 percent of his passes as a true freshman for 2,357 yards with 11 touchdowns and five interceptions. He was the sixth in the SEC with an average of 214.3 yards per game, which was also the best among SEC freshmen.
Going into the 2019 season, it was assumed that Bentley would be the starting defender, and he won that job earlier in the year. Hilinski, however, won the job of reserve quarterback Dakereon Joyner, which ended up switching to the wide receiver. Bentley fell for the season in the first game of the season against North Carolina, hurting his foot in the last offensive play of the game.
Hilinski took control of the attack and became only the sixth real freshman to start as a quarterback in a South Carolina uniform. After completing his first 12 passes against Charleston Southern on his first start, he went on to make 24 out of 30 to 282 yards with a couple of touchdowns in the game. Then he won the SEC’s Freshman of the Week honors, with a 36 to 57, 324 yard performance and two touchdowns against Alabama.
That was when his season was a little to the side when he started having problems with injuries. He had shoulder pains before entering the next game against Missouri, and went 13 to 30 in the team’s defeat. His shoulder was not healthy until after the week of goodbye and he had a great first half going 15 out of 20 against Georgia after the break. But he suffered a knee injury and missed the rest of the game and was never the same for the rest of the season.
Hilinski was locked in this offseason in a quarterback competition with a transfer to the state of Colorado Collin Hill, who joined his former head coach Mike Bobo, who was hired as an offensive coordinator in South Carolina. Hill won the job and Hilinski never had much of a chance in games with a Gamecock uniform in his second year on the show.
Finally, Hilinski decided to look for an opportunity elsewhere and entered the NCAA Transfer Portal.