As the story goes, a conversation with his father when he was younger is the reason USC freshman wide receiver Joseph Manjack stopped wearing gloves and continues to play without them, which is a rarity at his position these days.

"My dad, when I was little, he said, 'What's your excuse for dropping the ball when you wear gloves?' I said, 'Gloves.' He said, 'Stop wearing them. You don't need any excuses.' 'Yes sir,'" Manjack recalled earlier this month.

The story is fun, but what he's done with those hands this preseason is what's especially notable.

The underrated freshman from Tomball, Texas, who was rated a two-star prospect at the time USC offered him last fall (he'd end up as a three-star), has caught pretty much everything thrown his way this preseason -- while also catching all of that attention that seemed to elude him as a recruit.

The lowest-ranked of USC's three 2021 WR signees, who didn't arrive until this summer, now enters the start of the season as the team's first-string A receiver (inside).

For many, he was the surprise of camp -- but not to the coaches who recruited him or those back in Tomball.

"Turn on his high school tape and see what you think," offensive coordinator Graham Harrell said, when asked if the Trojans had found a diamond in the rough. "Every game he was going for like 250 total yards and 4 touchdowns. Good football players are good football players. I don’t think it’s real hard to see if you watch the tape that he’s a really talented football player. He understands it, he makes plays, he’s good with the ball in his hands. They played him at quarterback, they played him at receiver, they put him all over the place, and everywhere he was, he made big plays. And he’s playing at the highest level of Texas football, a really high division in the city of Houston with great athletes. It’s not like he’s not playing against good competition.

"I think we evaluated him well, but if you watch his tape, I’d think most people would say that’s a really good football player."

And yet that's not at all how his recruitment played out.

The Trojans didn't offer Manjack until late October, and it's not as if the in-state schools were banging down his door either. At the time, Manjack was committed to Washington State, feeling that was his best option when he made that decision in late August of his senior year after previously being committed to SMU.

So far, given the way he's asserted himself in short order this summer at USC, it looks like both the recruiting analysts and a long list of college recruiters weren't totally able to see what that tape shows.

How that factors into Manjack's mindset now or how he puts his dramatic rise over the last year in perspective is hard to say, though, as he hasn't had any interest in discussing that matter.

"To be honest, I don't really know, but that's in the past now," he said earlier this month when asked why he thought he was overlooked as a prospect. "We're in college, so moving on."

As for whether it's a source of motivation for him ...

"It's in the past now, [I] don't worry about it," he answered.

Those that scouted, recruited and coached him are more than willing to fill in the gaps, though, and explain how a guy who was a severely-underrated two-star prospect this time last year now figures significantly into USC's offensive plans as a true freshman.

"Not surprised at all," Tomball Memorial HS offensive coordinator Jim Woodard says as he starts the conversation earlier this week. "Not surprised at all."

While USC didn't formally offer Manjack until October, the wide receiver was on the Trojans radar prior to that start of his senior season.

USC tight ends coach Seth Doege, who would play a lead role in his recruitment, recalls that somebody in the offensive coaches office had come across a Twitter video of Manjack working out with a man named Rischad Whitfield, who is better known on social media as "The Footwork King."

"I can't remember who sent it to me or we just randomly found out, but ... Manjack was working with him a lot and you could kind of see that this guy was very smooth, had a good feel for getting in and out of breaks. So then you turn the tape on and all of a sudden it's just like explosive play after explosive player after explosive play, so it kind of caught your eye, like, this guy's pretty good," Doege recalled. "And through the season you put it on each and every week, whether he's playing receiver, quarterback or whatever, at receiver he's going for 200-300 yards through the air, if he's playing quarterback he's going 200-300 yards on the ground. So [we said], 'Man, this guy's a football player.'

"And it got to a point where we're just like, 'This guy can do it, he's smooth, he's got great body control and great ball skills, and not only that, he's just a football player.' Because at every position you play him ... even at punter, he would punt it and all of a sudden he's making a knock-down tackle. You fall in love with a kid like that."

By the end of his senior season at Tomball Memorial, Manjack had 42 receptions for 971 yards and 16 touchdowns, had rushed for 874 yards on a jaw-dropping 14.3 yards per carry with 13 touchdowns and had also passed for 349 yards, 3 touchdowns and 0 interceptions while helping his team to the 6A Division II regional semifinals.

"He's just a special kid all around. ... One of those kids that it doesn't matter what you ask him to do on the field, he's going to go do it. If you ask him to run through a brick wall, he wouldn't question it. He would do it," Woodard, Tomball Memorial's offensive coordinator said. "He stepped in at several different positions. We had a quarterback go down and he stepped up and played quarterback and won us three big football games that we needed to have to make the playoffs.