Shane Beamer talks focal points heading on the road to Arkansas
South Carolina put to bed its season-opening win Sunday afternoon, getting on the practice field for a little bit.
As that ends, the Gamecocks turn the page now to an even bigger test next week on the road at a likely top-20 Arkansas team at noon ET.
And Shane Beamer has a few things that will be keys to pulling off a road win.
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“Certainly we have to create more turnovers than what we did defensively last night,” Beamer said. “We were able to get one turnover on the interception and had a couple on offense we gave away. We have to be better creating turnovers.”
The Gamecocks threw two interceptions yesterday while picking off Georgia State’s Darren Grainger once. That came late in the game with the Panthers having to air it out more trailing by 21 points.
South Carolina last season was one of the best teams in the SEC in forcing turnovers and weren’t able to get the ball off Georgia State for the majority of the game.
Doing so on the road against the Razorbacks will be imperative.
The next key for Beamer focuses on the offensive side of the ball.
“”We have to be able to run the football. Arkansas or any other team—Georgia State, South Carolina State, Arkansas, Georgia—if they’re able to make any team one-dimensional it’s hard to call plays that way,” Beamer said. “We have to find a way to run the ball and continue to work on stopping the run.”
South Carolina rushed 32 times for 79 yards, 29 times for 97 when taking out three sacks for minus-18 yards.
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Over half of the Gamecocks’ rushes went for two or fewer yards.
The good news for Beamer and his staff is the Gamecocks have data points this season to evaluate and tweak heading into SEC play.
“We have one game our body of work right now we can look at and say, ‘OK, here are some warts that showed up we didn’t anticipate that we maybe need to have better answers for as far as offense, defense and special teams,”’ Beamer said. “We have a better idea about our personnel. We’re excited to get to work.”
The Gamecocks are coming off a 35-14 win over Georiga State where it scored two special teams touchdowns to ice the game.
Arkansas is coming off a season-opening win over Cincinnati where the Razorbacks scored 31 points. They averaged 8.6 yards per pass attempt, 5.0 yards per rush and 6.3 yards per play.
The Bearcats averaged 3.6 yards per rush, 7.5 per pass and 5.8 per play. The Razorbacks sit currently at No. 19 in the AP poll but could move up after the win.
