Why Beamer is confident South Carolina's front seven on defense can go 'up against anybody'

As Kentucky entered its first drive of the second quarter on Saturday, the Wildcats tried to simplify things. Since they were having a tough time in the passing game, why not try to run the ball and see what happens?

The initial intention may have been a good idea since it worked at first. But once South Carolina picked up on what was going on, the plan was quickly foiled.

At one point in the quarter, Kentucky ran the ball on 17 consecutive plays. Combined with the fact that the Wildcats were starting to mix in backup quarterback Gavin Wimsatt, who’s more of a runner, the light bulb turned on inside of the Gamecocks.

“That’s the best feeling, man,” said TJ Sanders, who had a sack and tackle for loss. “… Once we seen that, we knew we really have to take advantage of those guys right now. Take away the one thing that they can do.”

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With how well the Gamecock defense played, it forced Kentucky to play more one dimensional. And while the Wildcats had some success in the run game, they could never find the end zone, as South Carolina cruised to a 31-6 win in Lexington.

After a solid first game last week, everything the defense did carried right into this critical Week 2 matchup. It all started with what worked the best last weekend, which was creating pressure in the backfield.

Much of the talk on Saturday, at least from a South Carolina perspective, was about LaNorris Sellers making his first road start at quarterback in the SEC. But for the Wildcats, this was also Brock Vandagriff’s first SEC start under center.

Almost immediately, Vandagriff had to feel the full wrath of the defensive front. The Gamecocks sacked him three times in the opening quarter and finished with five on the day. They knew he was a good player, but he hadn’t faced this level of talent in a game before.

“Brock is a really good quarterback — Vandagriff. I’ve talked about how hard we recruited him at Oklahoma, he’s a talented guy,” head coach Shane Beamer said. “Brock may have been in college for a long time, but outside of the Georgia defense that he faced in practice every day, he’s never played against a defense like ours in a game as the starting quarterback.”

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And at no point did Vandagriff’s situation improve. He ended his day going 3-for-10 passing for 30 yards and an interception by Nick Emmanwori in the fourth quarter, which was taken the other way for a pick six.

The key for Beamer and the defensive unit was to make life as hard as possible on Vandagriff. And that plan seemingly worked to perfection.

“We really just wanted to give him a lot of different looks and really do a good job of disguising coverages and just staying on the attack,” Beamer said. “They make it tough on you because they shift, they motion, they give you a lot of unusual formations. … So we need to be on the attack from the get-go and we absolutely were and made it really tough on them to do things.”

For the game, South Carolina’s offense managed to out-gain Kentucky 252 to 183 in total yardage. Leading up to kickoff, Beamer had to hear all about how good the Wildcats’ defense was and everything in between. But after the way things went on Saturday, he hopes people see that his defense is pretty good, if not better, as well.

“We’re really good up front on defense. We knew that. I’ll put our front seven up against anybody,” he said. “And so we knew that we were going to be able to generate some pressure on the quarterback. Any time you play these guys, any time you play any game, it always starts with stopping the run. But we needed to control the line of scrimmage. We felt good about our ability up front on defense to be able to be able to do that.”

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