What Shane Beamer said in his Tuesday press conference previewing Wofford

South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer spoke to the media on Tuesday to preview the Gamecocks’ upcoming matchup at home against Wofford on Saturday. Here’s what he had to say.

— Have a good Wofford team coming in here on Saturday. The improvements they’ve made from last season to this year are evident. They’re certainly going to be excited about playing South Carolina. Knows how juiced up they’ll be. Has a lot of respect for they program and the way they play.

— There’s a lot for his team to be better at in all three phases. That was the main message in the team meeting this morning was to get better. Good spirits and energy right now.

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— Need to make sure they honor the seniors the right way on Saturday. That is the last Gamecock Walk they’ll get to do. And then they’ll be honored right after pregame warmups at 3:30 p.m. Asks all fans to shut their tailgates down early and come support a really special group of seniors.

— Was flabbergasted two years ago when Kai Kroeger wasn’t a finalist for the Ray Guy award. He was absolutely fantastic in 2022. But to have the year he’s having right now, he doesn’t think there’s a better punter in the country then and he doesn’t think there’s a better one now.

— Nyck Harbor works his butt off. He’s so appreciative for everything that he gets. After the A&M game last year, Harbor thanked him for giving him an opportunity. That’s still ongoing now. That’s why he brought the game ball into the postgame presser the other day. It meant a lot for him to earn that. He’s worked really hard on the details of being a receiver.

— Hasn’t really thought about the future with playing an FCS team before Clemson. South Carolina has always played an SEC team the week before Clemson under Beamer. The more he thinks about it, most teams in the SEC have this type of game before playing their rivalry game. There’s merit to both ways about who to play before Clemson.

— One play no one is really talking about with LaNorris Sellers was when they ran a quarterback run in the fourth quarter after Missouri had just taken the lead. It was a play that he ran for a first down on. It got the drive going for South Carolina. He broke some tackles and his extra effort allowed them to get the drive going. It was the drive that they took the 27-22 lead.

— Told the team they better have a respect for Wofford when they play them because they can present some problems. They’ve ran some fakes on plays this season. So you better have yourself ready to go. They can attack you on special teams. For the team, it’s about them. They need to get better this week. They’re still writing this story in the month of November. They’ve always gotten better as the season goes on. But they better get better this week. The practices are still spirited and intense this week.

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— They’ll talk about the emotions that come with senior day and having to go play football after being honored. That’s always something you worry about for sure. But the way to make senior day extra special is to go win the game at hand. When the game starts, it’s all about football. Knows he’ll get emotional when Saturday comes. It’s just because of how much gratitude he has for these guys.

— Nick Emmanwori has been huge for this team with him here for his junior season. He’s been awesome. It seems like yesterday where he was out here at a high school summer camp and they kind of knew about him. For him to be a guy from South Carolina, it’s awesome. There were plenty of places he could’ve gone after last year but he wanted to finish what he started here at South Carolina.

— It’s huge to have so many veteran guys on defense this year. That’s why he shook his head at some of the projections heading into the year. It wasn’t like they had a bunch of slaps returning. They had a good team coming into this year with the guys returning.

— His plan is to have 105 roster spots and 85 scholarships for next season.

— In regard to keeping the older guys after last season, it wasn’t so much of a challenge but making sure the seniors who were deciding on their future that they knew they weren’t that far off. He truly meant that. There was a player who left after last season who told him they weren’t going to be good this year and that they didn’t have a quarterback. He’s somewhere else right now. There was always a plan in place to get this thing right. It wasnt him having to convince guys to stay but it was more so talking about NFL feedback and what the plan would be if a specific player came back. There’s also an academic element to it. It’s about showing them why this year is going to be different.

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— Loves everything the creative media team does. They are so talented. Hears Justin King and the team always talking about their ideas. The one video that still comes up all the time is the Turn My Swag On video before SEC Media Days in 2022. The Office spoof also comes up everywhere from random people that come up to him and saw that parody. That was pretty good.

— Injury report: Brady Hunt won’t play. Outside of that, they’re optimistic on everyone else that didn’t finish the game. Judge Collier should be fine as he practiced today. Need to see how the other tight ends come along this week. Jared Brown is a little banged up.

— Josiah Thompson should be good to go for this week. Tree Babalade played really well against Missouri. Feels good about both of those guys regardless of who’s out there.

— Donated a contribution to The Carolina Band to help them on their way to New York City for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. So grateful for the impact and what they do. He was sitting in his office recently and got a text from Darius Rucker saying the band is trying to get up to NYC. He wanted to see if him, Beamer and Dawn Staley would help contribute to their trip. It took him about five seconds to respond with heck yeah to see what he can do to help. Appreciates Rucker coming up with that idea.

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