Khalil Barnes says freshman class is close, wants to win a championship

Barnes (36) and fellow freshmen TJ Parker (12) and Shelton Lewis (14) celebrate Kylon Griffin's INT.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Mon Nov 13 13:09:17 GMT-04:00 2023

CLEMSON – Freshman safety Khalil Barnes knew this freshman class was special before any of them ever played a down.

Tiger freshmen have played a pivotal role this season, especially on the defensive side of the ball. The Tigers have been without veteran safeties Tyler Venables, Jalyn Phillips, RJ Mickens, and Sherrod Covil at times this season, and have been without veteran corner Sheridan Jones over parts of the last few weeks.

Enter the freshmen, who played havoc with Georgia Tech quarterback Haynes King last week. Clemson intercepted King four times, and freshmen recorded all four interceptions. Shelton Lewis, Kylon Griffin, Avieon Terrell, and Khalil Barnes all had picks against King, who entered the contest with ten on the season.

In all, ten freshmen recorded a tackle, with Barnes registering five, including two tackles for loss.

“Yeah, we knew our class was going to be special because when he said it, especially in the off-season, when all of us are signed, he said that he felt like our class was one of the closest classes he had signed,” Barnes said Monday. “I think that shows on the field, like every time Shell (Lewis), AV (Terrell), Peter (Woods), TJ (Parker), any of us make a play. It's even the guys that aren't seeing the field as much, this ‘23 class especially, they just all celebrate each other. We just trust the process, all came in with the right mindset, just want to keep working every day.”

Barnes said that head coach Dabo Swinney set the expectation that the 2023 class would win a National Championship.

“Coach, he always talks about unwavering belief,” Barnes said. “The rest of my visits were more like, see the facility, and then I go hang out with one of the players that's already on the team. But here, it’s something different than they do during regular recruiting trips. You spend the whole visit with the recruits you're coming in with. So, on the official visit, especially South Carolina last year, I just spent a lot of time with those guys, just built a connection. So, it's like when you have a group of guys where it already feels like we - before we even got here, we were brothers. We are locked in like that, and you're going to do whatever you can do to help them be successful. And successful is a championship. We just felt like we had talent. We had enough talent in our class, and we had enough talent already here. We're going to keep producing talent, so we can definitely get there.”