What Shane Beamer said during his Sunday evening teleconference
South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer spoke to the media one day after the Gamecocks’ 50-7 win over Akron during his Sunday night teleconference. Here’s what he had to say.
— Great night last night. Proud of the guys with the way they prepared and played. It’s fun to get a lot of guys in there. Excited to see how they played in the second half. The fourth quarter was very impressive with outscoring Akron 21-0. That’s the way you finish games.
— Offensive players of the game: Robby Ashford, Juju McDowell
— Defensive players of the game: DQ Smith
— Special teams players of the game: Kai Kroeger
— Scout team offense player of the week: Mac Walters and Djay Braswell
— Scout team defense player of the week: Rondo Porter, Buddy Mack
— Scout special teams player of the week: Eriq Rice
— Gamecock MVP: Everyone involved with the throwback uniforms
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— Tuesday and Wednesday they’ll introduce a little bit of Ole Miss. Players will have off Thursday-Saturday.
— Everybody will be off Saturday, then be back in on Sunday.
— Thinks everybody should be fine for Ole Miiss in terms of health. Rocket Sanders would be the most questionable if there was a game this week. But everyone else would be fine for a game on Saturday. This bye week comes at a great time.
— Offensively, you can manipulate the stats however you want, 16 sacks is 16 sacks. Been sacked way too many times. There’s seven teams in the conference that have been sacked five times or less. Got to get that fixed. Not just on the OL. It’s on everyone.
— Need to be better on third down. Need to stay out of third and long situations. Punted way too many times this year.
— Pleased with where they are on defense right now. Need to continue to be better with discipline everywhere and not trying to do too much. Execute over and over again.
— At running back, Beamer wants to get Matthew Fuller and Jawarn Howell more work. There’s no question they’ve got to get them more work. They are two talented guys they need to find ways to get going. Jatavius Shivers came in on the OL and has gotten better since last year. Excited about him. Defensively, Fred Johnson is doing a lot for them at linebacker right now. He’s doing a lot of good things.
— LaNorris Sellers was wearing an earpiece last night and it’s just to communicate with Dowell Loggains. No different from the helmet communication.
— They continue to get better with how balanced they have been. They’re different from last season with the offense. They weren’t running triple option in the run game. Loggains and the offensive staff have done a good job of finding unique ways of running the ball and shifting and motion. Thinks they’re doing some really cool stuff. They’ve gotten better offensively each game. They played pretty good last night without some of the key pieces on offense. Need to continue to stay ahead of other teams and keep getting better.
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— The coaches will be kind of all over to see recruits this week on Thursday and Friday. Pretty much everyone, including himself, will be in different places. All 10 of them will be on the road. They’ll be a little bit of everywhere. They’ll be in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina and all over South Carolina as well.
— Wouldn’t say there’s one overarching issue with the pass protection and sacks. Doesn’t think it’s any one thing. A lot of it has been miscommunication and some at the tight end position. Just need to be better. They’ll go back and look at everything.
— With Sellers, he’s been running around and looked good today. They’ll be smart with him this week since there’s no game on Saturday. They’re goiung to get a lot of good work in and put him in slowly. Ashford and Davis Beville both played really well. Beville made good decisions and was decisive. Ashford made some big-time throws. Then you saw what he could with his feet. They’ve got multiple quarterbacks that can help them win.
— Michael Smith tweaked his hamstring a little bit last night but doesn’t expect it to be anything long-term.
— It was more of a coaches decision to not play Tree Babalade. He’s been a little banged up and wanted to be smart with how they used him from a physical standpoint.
