CHARLOTTE — Demetrius Knight laughed and very carefully tempered his words.

"There's a lot of (teams) standing out, but, I'll say one team and then I can go the completely opposite direction come draft day," the Gamecocks linebacker said following his pro day at South Carolina. "So I'm not going to rustle any feathers."

Knight has only been at South Carolina one season, but in a short amount of time he became close to current teammates and former Gamecocks, including Xavier Legette. The Panthers receiver often makes the trip to Columbia to visit his alma mater. But closely following his journey to the NFL last season served as a lesson for all his fellow USC products.

Following the Senior Bowl last season, Legette had a feeling he was well liked in Charlotte, and said so.

"We had three days we had to meet with teams and each day I had to meet with the Panthers," Legette laughed while re-telling the story. "That's when I realized, OK they really want me. And then I just kept meeting with them."

Then, the week before the draft last April, Legette told a reporter, "I've met with the Panthers about four or five times. The relationship, it just keeps continuing to grow. They're really hoping that I can make it to the second round. They keep on telling me if I'm sitting at (pick) 33, they're going to take me."

He's good at a lot of things. Poker might not be one of them.

The Panthers did in fact draft Legette after trading into the first round to take the Mullins, S.C. native at No. 32 overall. When general manager Dan Morgan called Legette to tell him the good news, coach Dave Canales joked, "You didn't have to go tell the whole world we're going to do it though, the other day. We appreciate that."

Now as those in Columbia prepare for the home stretch to their own draft stories, they're keeping in mind the lesson from Legette.

"That's definitely something to learn from," laughed Knight. "I'm glad they came through because that would have been bad, but they came through for him."

Instead, Knight said he'd keep his mouth shut and listen, not to mocks or outside sources, but just from the teams themselves.

"We'll see what the next couple of days hold," Knight said. "Of course there'll be visits and meetings and things coming up, so we'll continue to pick their brains as they're picking ours to see how they truly feel about us."

The Panthers are making sure to hold how they feel about prospects close to their chest, while being more open about other targets heading into Thursday's draft, such as the possibility of trading back from No. 8 overall and gathering more picks.

"I don't really want to get into the specifics on like where I would trade back to, but you know I think we're definitely open to trading back and acquiring more picks," Morgan said last week while previewing the draft. "I think we're going to be open to all possibilities, let's put it that way, and there seems to be consensus that the front seven talent in this draft, is pretty stacked.

"We're not going to box ourselves in. We're going to be open to all possibilities with that number 8 pick, like I said, whether it's trading back or whether it's staying there and and picking somebody, so we're not going to, we're definitely not going to box ourselves in."

While the Panthers won't box themselves in, if everything goes to plan, the decision will remain boxed up until Thursday night. It's a lesson learned courtesy of Xavier Legette.