South Carolina plays its best under Shane Beamer in November. Here's why

There’s just something about South Carolina in the final month of the regular season. Sure, there’s “Cocktober” but the Gamecocks are really at their best when November rolls around.

Up to this point, South Carolina has been solid in 2024. The Gamecocks, fresh off their second bye week, head into the final month of the regular season at 4-3 with five games to go.

But as Shane Beamer well knows, nobody cares about how you start, they care about how you finish.

“This team will be judged and remembered by November and it’s very true with this group as well,” the fourth-year head coach said. “… It’s all out there in front of us. So, we don’t talk about big picture other than that. What matters is this week just having a 1-0 mentality and doing everything we can this week to go 1-0.”

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Luckily for Beamer, his teams at South Carolina have been pretty good at finishing out their seasons strong. The Gamecocks have gone 8-4 in November during the first three years of Beamer’s tenure. It’s been their best month of the season when stacked up against the others. Under Beamer, South Carolina is 9-8 in September and 5-8 in October.

Beamer couldn’t pinpoint what’s different about the team in this month each year. His first thought was not turning the ball over, but then he remembered when Clemson recovered a fumble on the second play of last year’s Palmetto Bowl and returned it for a touchdown in what would be a 16-7 loss for the Gamecocks.

But looking at it from a bigger picture standpoint, Beamer said South Carolina prides itself on being a team that “gets better as the year goes on.”

“I tell the players every year that it would be a shame if we’re the same team in September that we are in November,” Beamer said. “We need to continue to get better, and I think a big part of that goes back to the way we practice, the way we train in the weight room during the season. We try and get stronger, work to get better in practice as well.

“Yes, it’s preparing for an opponent, but we don’t do a ton of scout team work during practice. We do a ton of good on good against each other and work against each other in practice and work our guys a lot on Sunday nights after practice to continue to bring them along. I think that’s more of the reason we’ve had success in November and played fairly well is that we’ve been a team that continues to get better as the year goes.”

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For the players who have been around, they’ve seen what leads to the results they get in November. It starts with having good continuity.

“The best teams keep getting better as the year goes on. So, we attack practice the same way,” Boogie Huntley said. “As the season goes, we don’t lighten anything up or chill out at all. We just keep going the same way we’ve been going.”

Said Debo Williams: “Just the training we’ve always done with Luke Day, the type of practices Coach Beamer sets up for us. It helps us later in the season and to be able to go out and do what we do. So just continue to do what we do with the way we practice and how we train during the week and keep doing what we do.”

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Entering this final month, South Carolina will play five games, three of which against ranked teams. The Gamecocks will begin at home with No. 10 Texas A&M on Saturday before traveling to Vanderbilt the following weekend.

After that, they’ll play a two-game home stand with No. 25 Missouri and Wofford coming to town. Then it’s off to Clemson to play the No. 11 Tigers to finish out the regular season on Nov. 30.

“Hopefully we’re at our best in November,” Beamer said. “We know we’re going to need to be this year with these five games coming up in this month.”

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