What Shane Beamer is watching for in South Carolina's first spring scrimmage
For the first time this spring, South Carolina will play in a live scrimmage on Saturday at Williams-Brice Stadium.
While there will be no fans in attendance, it will be a good point of reference to see how far the team has come through working in practice the last few weeks.
One of the main things head coach Shane Beamer is looking forward to is the players playing without coaches on the field every play. That will be a difference from what they’re akin to in a practice-setting. Any scrimmages this spring will be as close as it gets to a regular season game.
“Just letting our guys be able to get out there and play a little bit would be for one,” Beamer said on what he wants to see. “We’ve done a little bit of live tackling work in a couple of our practices already this spring. But it’ll be the first day where the entire day is tackling and playing it like a game.”
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Beamer said there will be an SEC officiating crew to work the game on Saturday. His hope is that they can play “somewhat penalty-free,” even though he knows there will be some penalties here and there.
“Hopefully we get into that stadium and we don’t have a lot of pre-snap penalties and things like that that we can control,” Beamer said.
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Above all, Beamer will be interested to see how the players respond in this type of setting. Sure, this will be a closed scrimmage. So it won’t be the same as having an entire stadium filled with fans rocking out to Sandstorm. But this is a chance for guys to go out and make an impact.
“We talk a lot about when we go across the street into that stadium, our mentality and what an opportunity and blessing it is to be able to go into Williams-Brice Stadium,” Beamer said. Whether it’s 80,000 people in there or a Saturday morning with about 50 people in there. A lot of guys, they just flip a switch and they rise to the occasion if you will. Eager to see who really steps up.”
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There will also be a handful of position battles taking place. The obvious one comes at the quarterback spot, which Beamer admitted he hasn’t seen much separation there yet. But after Saturday, he should have a much better idea of who’s taking the wheel and running with their opportunity.
“We’ve got some great competitive battles going on in a lot of different positions,” he said. “It’ll be the morning time, so the lights won’t be on. But figure of speech wise, when the lights come on who responds and that’s what I’m eager to see.”
