Shane Beamer shares first impressions after South Carolina scrimmage
Saturday was a big day for South Carolina and its large group of potentially impact freshmen.
The Gamecocks had their first scrimmage of the preseason, an 80-play jaunt during a quintessentially hot Columbia day in August.
And Shane Beamer–fresh off the practice field–broke down what he liked and didn’t like.
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“Some really quality work on both sides of the ball. I wanted to really emphasize our younger players today and see, see what they can do,” Beamer said. “And give them an opportunity to get out there and show if they can have a role this upcoming season or not. And it was good to see a lot of those guys out there flashing today.”
With having a ton of younger players logging significant snaps comes growing pains.
Beamer lamented some of the penalties the Gamecocks had and the need to clean that up. Mario Anderson had a run called back because of a penalty and there were far too many issues holding in the secondary.
Last year South Carolina was called for 90 penalties, tied for the fourth-most in the SEC.
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“Just way too many, too many penalties that negated explosive plays offensively or holding penalties on in the secondary on defense that extended drives. We pride ourselves on playing smart football,” Beamer said.
“In year one here in 2021, we were one of the fewest penalized teams in this league. Last year we were one of the most. So we’ve got to get that cleaned up. Had too many of those today that we didn’t need.”
One thing Beamer was pleased with was the offensive explosiveness, mentioning the Gamecocks had “a handful” Saturday afternoon.
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Spencer Rattler took all of the reps with the first team while backups LaNorris Sellers, Colten Gauthier and Tanner Bailey were live in the scrimmage.
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(The explosives) were good to see and then defensively played pretty well I thought just got to eliminate the explosives as well. But like the group similar to what I’ve told you guys before,” Beamer said. “It’s a hard-working group to be on practice number eight today. You know, I know we’re a tough team and we play hard and play physical. We just got to get a lot of the other stuff cleaned up.”
South Carolina is off Sunday and will practice all week before the final scrimmage of the preseason next Saturday at 7 p.m.
After that, the page turns to North Carolina preparations.
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“Then really start to hone in on who we are and who we’re going into game one with,” he said. “But certainly feel like we’ve made a lot of improvements through these first eight practices and really like coaching this group from top to bottom.”
