Shane Beamer proud of South Carolina's fight in first win ever over Texas A&M
A month ago, Shane Beamer sat in the South Carolina postgame locker room coming off a shellacking to top-ranked Georgia. There, he snipped back at a question about his team giving up in the second half of the blowout loss.
The tone Saturday night, his hat still wet with the Gatorade his team doused him with, was vastly different.
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“I’m so proud of their fight. They never flinch. It’s a really, really special group of kids in that locker room and I’m happy for them. It’s a little over a month ago we sat in here after the Georgia game and got asked if I sensed any quit in this football team. Does that look like this team quit?” Beamer said, matter-of-factly.
“Since that day we’ve won four straight for the first time since 2013. We just beat Kentucky on the road in Lexington for the first time since 2012. Then we just beat Texas A&M for the first time ever. So no, there’s no quit in this team. We have a bunch of freaking fighters on this team.”
The Gamecocks exorcized some demons Saturday night, beating Texas A&M 30-24 for the first win in program history against the Aggies.
The jubilation and pandemonium of the six-point win was a far cry from the despondent press conferences South Carolina had after its worst loss to Georgia in program history.
And it served for MarShawn LLoyd and South Carolina as a message to the rest of the SEC.
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“We were able to show people that two weeks ago wasn’t a fluke. We’re here now. South Carolina’s on the rise. We’re here to compete with anyone,” he said. “We’re here to get better and better each week, we’re here to prove to everyone we can play against any team and compete against anybody.”
Now the next step for South Carolina is to parlay a bye-week win into some end-of-season momentum.
Last year the Gamecocks came off a bye week and walloped Flordia 40-17 en route to finishing the year with six regular-season wins and a bowl victory.
After another post-bye win, South Carolina has five games left on the schedule with plenty of winnable games left to go. The Gamecocks should be favored in their next two games–home to Missouri and on the road at Vanderbilt. And ESPN’s FPI entering the week gave them a 37.5 percent chance to win at Florida.
So, there is a scenario in which the Gamecocks could look up in two to three weeks on a six or seven-game win streak. That doesn’t happen, though, if South Carolina fails to improve in practice.
The Gamecocks struggled offensively at times Saturday night, finishing with under 300 yards, but found a way to win.
“It’s continue to get better. That’s one of the things we talked to the team about. We should be confident going into this game because we got better as a football team going into this game…We just have to continue to get better. We’re by far not a finished product,” Beamer said.
“We just beat a really good Texas A&M football team with 286 yards of offense and however many turnovers we had. We did some good things but there’s a lot we can be better at defensively also and on special teams.”
But all of the talk about improvements can wait a day. South Carolina deserves to savor this win.
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“It felt amazing, honest man. I’ll be honest with you. I started tearing up a little bit,” Darius Rush said. “They’re a good football team but to come out with a win today is amazing, man. To see how much love we had after the game and the passion we showed meant a lot. This game was a personal game and it meant a lot.”
