GC LIVE: The Florida View on Gamecocks vs. Gators
Gamecock Central’s LIVE Wes Mitchell and Chris Clark are joined by GatorsOnline.com’s Nick de la Torre to discuss the South Carolina Gamecocks matchup with Florida.
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South Carolina ‘won’t back down’ from the tough environment at Florida
By Joe Macheca
The echoes of Tom Petty’s “Won’t back down” cut through the South Carolina operations building Tuesday, booming from the practice fields all the way to the media room on the second floor.
The Gamecocks, preparing to play in Petty’s hometown of Gainesville Saturday when they travel to Florida, are trying to prevent any free falling that may occur on the field.
Head coach Shane Beamer emphasized that the focus is always internal and that the environment is only a piece of the equation.
“It’s about us preparing the right way to go play well,” Beamer said. “We don’t make a big deal about where we’re going into.”
Success on the road is something the program has been missing for a while, but the Gamecocks have been better on the road of late.
South Carolina has now won two road games consecutively for the first time since 2012 and, with a win Saturday, would have three straight road wins for the first time since 2011.
Defensive leader and starting cornerback Darius Rush also spoke on the importance of worrying about themselves.
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“An emphasis is that it’s us vs. us…We take it each week as a nameless faceless opponent,” he said.
“No matter where you’re playing, no matter what time, at the end of the day a game has to be played. So for us to just go in there and not beat ourselves you stand a chance,” Rush said.
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Beamer also said that the team added a Friday walkthrough to their away schedule to give the team a chance to see the environment.
That’s a deviation from the Gamecocks’ road schedule last year, where South Carolina won just one of their regular-season games away from Williams-Brice.
“Just trying to get some of the newness of it out of the way on Friday, we’ve got a lot of guys that have never been to some of these stadiums,” Beamer said. “When you walk into some of these stadiums, ours included, for the first time it can be, ‘Oh my God’ at just how big they are.”
The Swamp is one of the premier venues in the SEC and is notorious for posing problems for opposing teams. As for South Carolina, it’s clearly on the radar, but also not the main focus.
“We make sure they’re aware of what it looks like, and we’ll go look at the stadium on Friday which is something that we’ve done this year which is a little bit new so they can see it but then after that, we don’t really talk about a whole lot about the road,” Beamer said.
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The team meets at the facility and does walkthroughs on Friday afternoons when at home. Adding the same walkthrough on the road has helped keep things consistent leading into the game. It also allows players to get a little more comfortable on the road.
Although Tom Petty is a hero to some, he’s not even on the Gamecocks’ radar this week.
“I actually don’t listen to Tom Petty,” Kai Kroeger said, smiling. “And I’m especially trying not to this week.”
