State's top prospect ready for rivalry

Photos courtesy of Eli White

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Wed Jul 13 21:58:13 GMT-04:00 2011

Wren (S.C.) shortstop Eli White Eli White
Infield
6-2, 170
Piedmont, SC
View Full Profile won’t set foot on the Clemson campus as a student and player for another two years, but the recent commitment to Jack Leggett’s baseball program is already talking a little smack to the Gamecocks.

The 6-2, 170-pound defensive whiz and 2013 prospect, generally regarded as the top 2013 player in the state, gave his verbal commitment to Leggett back on July 1st, and said it didn’t take long to get into the swing of the rivalry.

“A couple of weeks before I committed, a good friend of mine named Tyler Jackson [who also plays at Wren] committed to South Carolina,” White told TigerNet this week. “He is a good friend of mine, and we have played with each other and against each other since Little League. Hopefully we will whip up on them when we play them, though. We have sent texts back and forth to each other talking about it. He is a pitcher and he tells me he is going to strike me out, and I am telling him I am going to hit a home run.”

New recruiting coordinator Bradley LeCroy has placed more of an emphasis on recruiting in-state players, and White said he had been talking to Leggett for a long time before finally making the decision to attend Clemson.

“I had been talking to Coach Leggett a lot on the phone for a week before I made the decision,” he said. “I and my dad wanted to have a meeting with him, so we went up there and sat down with him in his office. He talked about how he thinks I could be a good player and able to play at the next level. He said that he wanted me to come to Clemson, and I told him this was definitely where I wanted to go.”

White said Clemson is where his heart has been all along.

“It definitely hasn’t all sunk in yet that I am going to a big Division 1 school like Clemson, a school that I have always loved and wanted to go to,” he said. “I have always gone to Clemson and watched the games on television with my dad and my granddad, and we always used to go to games there. Purple and orange and have always been my favorite colors, and I couldn’t see myself going anywhere else. And, I have always been a fan of Khalil Greene. I loved how he played defense and he could still hit.”

White hit .330 with two homers and 15 RBI for the Hurricanes last season, and he said the Tigers are getting a player who will never go into a game unprepared and plays great defense.

“I just like to play with full effort and as hard as I can,” he said. “I go out and play 100 percent, and the outcome is the outcome. You have to go out and practice and prepare hard and not have any doubts about your game. You get prepared in practice, and then you hustle hard. I take a lot of pride in being there for my pitchers, and I don’t like making mistakes. I work hard on my fundamentals and making clean throws and being sure of the out.”