Shane Beamer states South Carolina has 'a lot of work to do' before facing Virginia Tech in season opener

At one point in the 2024 season, the South Carolina Gamecocks were a team competing for a spot in the College Football Playoff. However, head coach Shane Beamer and the Gamecocks came up just short of that goal and with that had only a traditional bowl game to finish the season on a high note. That didn’t happen, however, and South Carolina would lose the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl.

Following that loss, an emotional Beamer lamented not finishing the season on a better note. However, he also made it clear that his focus is now on the 2025 season and getting ready for Virginia Tech.

“I wanted so much for them to get that 10th win,” Shane Beamer said. “We weren’t able to get it done, but like I just told them in there, just don’t lose sight of the journey that we’ve been on and what these guys have done since January when they came back. We’ve got a — I hurt for our seniors that we didn’t send them out better, but I just told them in there, ‘Don’t forget this feeling.’ We play Virginia Tech in 243 days and we’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then.”

South Carolina finished the season going 9-4. They also finished 15th ranked in the final College Football Playoff Selection Committee Rankings. That was just a couple of slots outside of what it would have taken to make the new 12-team field.

Now, Shane Beamer has turned his attention to improving the program. That starts with building the roster, in particular, amid the Transfer Portal. The 2025 South Carolina transfer class currently ranks 18th this cycle in the 2025 On3 College Football Team Transfer Portal Rankings. It’s a recruiting class that includes 16 players who have already left the program and 13 who have entered the program.

Then, in the high school recruiting ranks, Beamer has put together what is currently the 19th-ranked recruiting class in the 2025 cycle, according to the On3 Industry Ranking football Team Recruiting Rankings. It’s a class that includes 11 four-star recruits, and it also ranks 12th in the SEC.

Shane Beamer calls out preseason predictions for South Carolina following 9-4 finish

South Carolina outpaces all expectations they had in 2024 and, in response to that, Shane Beamer made sure to call out those preseason predictions that didn’t expect the Gamecocks to do as well as they did.

“There’s a lot of people, if you look at those preseason projections? Very few of them even had us in a bowl game in 2024,” Beamer recalled. “I may or may not have some of those saved on my phone as reminders because there was a lot. Some of y’all as well, some of the national media. I mean, there was one who thought we were going to go 3-9 and somebody thought we were going 5-7. There weren’t a lot of people picking us to be in a bowl game, much less the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl.”

Now, in 2025, Beamer and South Carolina will look to build on 2024 but they’ll likely do so with much higher preseason expectations.