Shane Beamer assesses what he's seen from South Carolina coming out of the bye
The bye week came at a good time for South Carolina for a lot of reasons, primarily a chance for the Gamecocks to get healthy. But another key piece to it is finally a breather after five hectic weeks of the season.
South Carolina having a week without preparing for an opponent gave Shane Beamer and the staff a chance to take a step back and reevaluate things from a personnel and scheme standpoint.
It served–as it always does–almost like a quality control assessment, and there were a few things that stood out to Beamer.
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“We have to play better and coach better in all three phases. I’ll say that. But we’re not far off. We’re not going into games and getting our butts kicked in our three losses,” he said. “We’ve gone into the second half of those games and it’s not like we’ve been out of it at halftime by any stretch of the imagination. For one, we have to do a better job of finishing.”
The Gamecocks have been in every game at half this season, trailing North Carolina by three and leading Georgia by 10 away from home. The game at Tennessee was a one-score game before half until a questionable passing call resulted in a pick-six.
Beamer also mentioned the Gamecocks needing to be better in situational football both offensively and defensively. And it starts on third down and ends with finishing drives offensively.
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“When we get teams in third down, we have to get off the field. When we’re in third down offensively, we have to stay on the field. Offensively, we’ve had too many drives stall out around the 40-yard line going in. It happened twice against Tennessee,” Beamer said.
“Against UNC we had the fourth down the first drive of the second half. Then we had three drives in the fourth quarter inside the 22-yard line and got three points out of it. We have to finish drives offensively when we get in plus territory.”
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South Carolina is converting on just 35.7 percent of third downs this season, 12th-best in the SEC. Opponents are converting 43.7 percent of the time. That’s good for 11th-best in the league.
The Gamecocks are also averaging just 3.6 points per opportunity, which is measured by a drive inside the opponents’ 40-yard line.
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“That’s one thing that jumped out and be better technique-wise. Then defensively continue to develop depth and issues where we have to continue to play guys,” he said. “Then are there things from a schematic standpoint we need to be doing differently in all three phases to help guys?”
Beamer also said he had a chance to meet with double-digit players last week to gauge how they’ve felt the first five weeks of the season.
“I met with about 15 players last week individually talking to them about their mindset. There may be things I don’t see or I might be missing,” Beamer said. “I wanted them to be able to talk to me freely about it as well. Those were good meetings I had with our guys to help us going forward.”
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The Gamecocks host Florida for Homecoming (3:30 p.m., SEC Network Plus).
