TeMarcus Blanton saw his college career end after the Final Four season in 2016-2017. The former Gamecock guard had been dealing with a hip injury which he suffered in his freshman season and could not recover to the point where he could be affective.
But Blanton stayed with the program and after earning his degree in 2018, his career at USC continued as a student assistant coach while he worked towards earning his graduate degree.
His time in the Gamecock program ended prematurely in March as the season was cut short due to the coronavirus. Since then, Blanton has been looking for a coaching opportunity and he has found one roughly 20 minutes from his hometown of Locust Grove, Georgia.
Blanton has been hired as an assistant basketball coach at Lovejoy High School in Hampton, Georgia. It is his first full-time coaching position.
Blanton played in 29 games at South Carolina, averaging 1.4 points per game.
He came to USC as a freshman in the 2014-2015 season when he suffered the hip injury in the preseason. After surgery, he came back the following season and played in eight games. As a redshirt sophomore the following season, he scored a career high 12 points in a contest at fifth-ranked Kentucky. In May, roughly a month after the Gamecocks' season ended in the Final Four in Glendale, Blanton made the decision to walk away from playing. But now he is beginning another chapter of his basketball career and no doubt his experiences through the peaks and valleys of life in the SEC will bode well for him as he begins his coaching career.
