Shane Beamer reveals how he'll measure success in 2023

Shane Beamer got a lot done at South Carolina in his second run as head coach. After going 7-6 in his first campaign, he improved upon that with an exciting 8-5 season. It was a year that featured a pair of Top-10 wins late before making an appearance in the Gator Bowl.

However, in order to improve in Year 3, Beamer told On3’s JD PicKell that it wouldn’t necessarily be about wins and losses. To sustain the rise that the Gamecocks are on, he says they’ll define success within their program as fully maximizing the potential of their upcoming team.

“I say it all the time and I believe it. It’s to be the very, very best that we can be. Just maximize the potential of the 2023 football season,” said Beamer. “I know everybody wants me to put a numerical number on that, how many wins we need, and all that. For me, it’s just continuing to make progress. We haven’t arrived by any stretch of the imagination. We have a lot of work to do. But make progress, get a little better than where we are right now as a program. And then get the very most out of the 2023 team that we can.”

“In 2022, we did a lot of really good things. But I feel like, obviously, there’s a lot of things that we could have done better. Let’s continue to try and get better in 2023,” Beamer said. “We’ve got a brutal schedule, which we’re excited about as competitors. And then, at the end of the season? Let’s look up and if I feel like we maximized the potential of the group of young men that we have? To me, that’s a successful season.”

A 1-2 start made things bumpy early on in Columbia in 2022. Even so, South Carolina managed to finish the regular season 7-2. That included a Top-15 road win at Kentucky as well as their statement victories over No. 5 Tennessee and No. 8 Clemson over the final two weeks of the year.

After losing a 14-point lead, they did lose in the final minutes of their bowl game against Notre Dame. All in all, though, Beamer’s second season was considered nothing but a success, especially considering their potential moving into the future.

With that said, it’s on Beamer and the program to keep that momentum going this upcoming season. They announced themselves to the SEC as 2022 winded down and now they’re looking to fully establish themselves with another successful year in his tenure. In his mind, it’s just all going to come down to whether or not he and his staff can make the most of their personnel rather than it only being about their record at the end of the campaign.