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South Carolina

Shane Beamer explains decision to use DL Tonka Hemingway on two-point conversion

Alex Weberby:Alex Weber•09/30/22
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Photo by Charles Brock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Weeknight college football can get a little wonky. So South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer had chaos on his mind entering Thursday night’s matchup with South Carolina State. After the Gamecocks scored their first touchdown, Beamer elected to go for two instead of kicking the conventional one-pointer. That’s a strange decision for so early in the game. But even stranger was the play call.

South Carolina lined up most of its offensive line near the left hash mark, but left their center — you know, the guy snapping the ball — on an island near the right hash, with defensive lineman Tonka Hemingway set to take the snap a few steps behind him. The big fella took the snap, to the surprise of the SC State defense, and rumbled right in for the conversion. No. 91 got his day in the end zone. Take a look:

After the game, Beamer was asked about the novelty play and whether he planned to call it ahead of time. He shared that he had it planned for a while but needed to figure out the right time to run it, and that time was in Thursday’s first quarter.

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So here was Beamer in the postgame discussing everything that went into the Tonka two-pointer (you can read his comments underneath the video):

“Yeah, kind of the same thing one of you guys asked me in the in the press conference. I think just about the stuff that we can do and and we’ve just got a a library of muddle-huddle type things that we can do. And like last week, there’s options, you know, off that play. And it was one of those. There’s got to be a certain look and if there’s a look, we’re gonna do it.

“Tonka’s a good athlete and we’re gonna snap the ball to to Tonka and let him run it. And he was fired up. You know, it’s something we worked on it quite a bit in the preseason and hadn’t had it in the game plan the first few games. But felt like it would be something that could work, you know, this night as well. So it was one of those we were I was going to call it no matter what. I mean, I wanted to see him run the ball. And excited for him as well. So yeah, it was just one of the things that we work on each week on an extra point and we got the look that we wanted.”

Shane Beamer finally found the perfect spot to unleash his defensive end on the offensive side of the football. Have a week, Tonka Hemingway.