Following South Carolina’s 24-11 win over Virginia Tech on Sunday, head coach Shane Beamer spoke with the media. Here’s everything he had to say.
Opening statement
“First of all, best of luck to Virginia Tech. Obviously I’ve got a lot of respect for that program. Brent Pry is doing a heck of a job. He’s the right guy for that job. They’re a good team. They’re going to win a lot of football games this year. We knew it was going to be a battle going in here. We know what that football program is about. They’ve got a lot of really good players. Their record was better last year — they were a better team last year than what the record indicated, and we knew we’d be in for a battle as well. Best of luck to those guys. Certainly appreciate AFLAC for inviting us to play in this game. They’re a first class organization. So thankful for Gary Stokan and his staff at the Peach Bowl. He’s a Hall of Famer and an all-timer — are you really retiring? Congratulations for all you’ve done as well. For everything you’ve done and first class, this is an awesome event to be a part of. We feel very blessed to have been in this game.
“Proud of our players. It was certainly ugly at times. We made it harder on ourselves than we needed to at times, but we told them at halftime that last year in this game, Georgia-Clemson, and I think Georgia was winning 6-0 at halftime, and then you saw in the second half how they just continued to get better. Georgia, last year. We told our players that it’s a similar scenario, and if we are who we say we are, a team that’s tough and has depth and physical and competitive, that we should get better as the game goes. It was really cool to see our guys do that.
“Certainly really emotional to me. I’d be lying to you if I told you this one wasn’t extra special. I was doing pretty good with the emotions until I did my “walk and I saw my parents at the end of it. That one certainly got me on that one. First games are tough, but this one’s extra tough just because of the unknown with Virginia Tech, with their new coordinators, the emotions of the game, all that as well. Just really, really proud of our players and the way they continued the battle throughout, and really cool to see us finish the game the way we did.”
Could you go through the decision to make Virginia Tech re-kick and not accept the penalty?
“Yeah, I just told our team in the locker room there’s a lot of coaches that would just say, hey, we’ll
take the extra five yards; not us. Any time — an old special teams coach told me like 20 years ago — not my dad, David; that would be way too fitting if it was him — but an old special teams coach told me nothing good for the kicking team ever happens after a re-kick. You know, I was sick in the head. I was having PTSD to the 2009 — thank you. You clearly remember. 2009 Clemson game where we kicked off to C.J. Spiller, Jacoby Ford, and Ellington, I think. Maybe. And then we were offsides. Then we came back over to the sideline.
“I had that voice in my head, nothing good happens after a re-kick, and I let DJ Swearinger and Stephon Gilmore and those guys talk me into re-kicking, and C.J. Spiller took it back 80 yards for a touchdown. So I was thinking of that, but really it was just that. We really feel like we had an advantage on when they punt the football with our people out there, whether blocking a punt, which they came close on a couple of them, or returning one. And because we were able to generate some pressure on them, they were very cognizant of getting a punt block. Those guys did a great job. And guys are starving. DQ Smith is out there. He was double-teaming a guy. It was really, really cool.
“So proud of Vicari Swain. He’s a weapon, and it was really neat for him to do that and how fitting that is playing Virginia Tech with their history, my dad’s history at special teams. I know Joe D is glad this week is over because I’m always amped up about special teams, but really this week with everything we have going, what a play. We needed it too. We weren’t playing great on offense, and we needed a spark at this point.”
You mentioned all the stuff around this game outside of football. How would you describe the experience for you just this week and today?
“Awesome. I’ve tried to just focus on what’s important, and that’s staying in the moment and helping our players perform well today. First games are always extra tough, in my opinion, just the newness and first games. We had 15 true freshmen in uniform today that had never been here, a bunch of new transfers that were playing their first game in a Gamecock uniform. So it was a lot of unknown and nerves.
Then you just add the emotions of it. I think I did okay during the week. I talked to the team on Tuesday. I didn’t want there to be any questions about where my emotions were. I wanted to dominate this football game and go win it. Told these guys early in the week and proud of them for having each other’s backs and having my back and finding a way to win it in the fourth quarter.”
Nyck Harbor had a drop earlier, but he came back and got the big touchdown catch. What can this do to help his confidence, and what can it do to continue advance his game?
Really proud of Nyck. How about him covering punts too? What a great tackle he had when he
went downfield as the gunner and made a solo tackle, returning kicks for us. It was a heck of a catch. I hate that they overturned it, but I get it. I told Nyck, you’re going to come back and make another one as well, and he did. What a play. He’s a weapon. He’s just going to continue to get better. Nobody works harder. I’m so happy for him. He’s such a great young man. It’s pretty awesome. One of the days that you guys were out at practice that we gave you media availability and we were in the indoor and Hunter was there and some of you guys took pictures of Hunter out there on the field that day, well, there was a play from the day before — the same day that Nyck Harbor scored on today. We had run the same play the day before in practice, and LaNorris did not throw the post to Nyck on that play. Hunter was at practice, and Mike Shula came over to Hunter and said, hey, go told LaNorris when we call that play, to throw the post. Lo and behold, that was the play we called today, and he sure as hell threw the post on that one today for a touchdown. So credit to Hunter for coaching up LaNorris on that one to throw the post, and
great job by Nyck going up. And our offensive line too protection-wise, holding up in there, and giving him time to throw it.”
When Vicari dropped the punt return earlier, you immediately went up to him and talked to him. What did you say, and what went through your head when you saw him return it for 80 yards?
Initially, we didn’t release a depth chart, but Jalon Kilgore was probably going to be the punt
returner today. And then he had a little bit of a hamstring that had been nagging him this week, so Vicari got more of the reps. We just said, Jalon, you focus on defense. Vicari, you’re going to be the punt returner. He’s a talented guy, but that’s tough when you’re in this environment, that arena and everything. I told him in pregame warmups he’s going to make a play. When he dropped it first, I told him the same thing I told Nyck first down, second down in the game, get that out of your system. And I told him, you’re going to make a play before the day’s out to help us win this thing, and he certainly did. It just
goes back — he’s young. We’ve got a lot of young guys. It’s just helping him through those moments. This is an awesome environment, and credit to our fans for coming out and making it like a home game for us today. It was awesome to see them here. I know our players feed off that as well. And I’d be remiss, we gave a game ball to Travian Robertson in the locker room today. I know he’s obviously watching and wanted to be here obviously. I talked to him when we landed in Atlanta yesterday as soon as we got off the plane, and told him we’d get this thing for him. So it’s pretty cool to take a game ball back to him.”
It seemed like you were shuffling the offensive line in the second half. How would you evaluate that group and how they progressed throughout the game?
“I thought they were good. Shed Sarratt wasn’t here today. He was injured. He would have had a role in this game most likely. He’s been out for a couple of weeks. Thought we were going to be able to get him back. He wasn’t quite ready. Those guys did okay early on. Virginia Tech, we talked about how critical it was going to be in the first quarter just figuring out what their plan is. We had a thought it would be movement and trying to disrupt us up front, and they did a nice job taking away the run early. I thought those guys on the offensive line settled down. We got Markee Anderson in there. Rodney Newsom started, and we got Markee in there as the game went also. He did a good job. We’ve got a solid — I wish we had more depth on the offensive line, but we’ve got a solid seven, eight guys in there now that we feel comfortable playing, and that was the plan, was to get all those guys in there as the game went.”
Dylan had a few where he almost got home before he finally did it. Do you guys ever have to keep him up, like, hey, you are going to do it, or he’s just that disruptive even when he doesn’t get the quarterback?
“No, I literally just had that — he is that disruptive when he doesn’t get the quarterback, but I literally just had that conversation with Dylan walking off the field. It’s one thing we’ve been talking to him about. It’s something we talked to him about as a staff this morning when we met at the hotel. Dylan couldn’t let the frustration get to him where they’re double-teaming him or they’re chipping him or they’re running away from him, because when they’re doing that they’re devoting a lot of resources to him and there’s 10
other guys out there that now need to step up and make plays. I thought Dylan did a great job. I thought he played really, really hard. He affected the quarterback even when he wasn’t in the backfield, and that’s what I was most proud of, just his demeanor during the game, because — he’s still young, but the Dylan of last year, I think, might have let the frustration get to him. He just continued to play and has matured in a lot of ways, and really proud of him.”
How’s Judge doing? And overall with the cornerbacks, it seemed like you guys were leaving him out there one-on-one, and they were able to get 50-50 balls?
They did. Yeah, we’ve got to be better about playing the ball in the air. Their receivers are really good. 0, the guy that transferred from Wake Forest. I mean, you watch his Wake Forest tape, he made a lot of one-on-one catches like that and knew he was a weapon for them. They did a nice job. Disappointed that on those 50-50 balls they came down with them too many times. But proud of our guys. We were rolling guys in there. I mean, Judge got hurt. To answer your question, to be determined. It’s a little bit of a knee injury right now. We’ll see when we get back to Columbia, but he was not able to return obviously. Brandon Cisse, Myles Norwood, Demarcus Leach was in there as a true freshman. Came in there; we didn’t really anticipate him playing, but he’s in there playing today and whatnot. Losing Judge was a big loss, but those other guys stepped up. That will be a big point of emphasis in practice this week. We’ve got to be better at playing those 50-50 balls in the air.”
Now that you’ve gone through this experience of coaching against Virginia Tech and winning the game and your whole family got to be there, how will you remember this day?
“Just proud of our players and how they played. I remember just — not to pat myself on the back or
give myself accolades, but I really appreciate our players telling me in the fourth quarter, we got your back, Coach, and we got this one. We got it for you and all that as well, and that means a lot. It’s a great group of young men in that locker room. I’ll remember just the gratitude that I have for my time at Virginia Tech, growing up, playing there, coaching there. The gratitude that I have for the unbelievable fan base and people in this program here at Carolina and my family this year. I’m very blessed, Mark. Not to get cheesy and all that, but I got up like I always do and go running this morning at like 6:30. We were staying downtown, and I ran down to Georgia Tech’s campus. I got into coaching in this city, what is it, 26 years ago, I guess now, back in the year 2000 as a young graduate assistant at Georgia Tech. Didn’t know a darn thing, and just trying to hope I could get a job one day coaching football somewhere. Looked and saw the window where my old office was and walked up outside of the stadium and then went running down to where the practice fields were. Just gratitude that 26 years ago to get into this profession, just hoping to get a job, and then here I am 26 years later to be coaching in the SEC at a special place like South Carolina. It’s pretty, pretty cool.”
When you look at how LaNorris Sellers starts this game, just what he does in general with his
feet as well as his arm, just reflecting on recruiting him coming in late and hindsight 20/20 having a leader like that on this team?
“He’s a stud. He’ll be the first to tell you he missed some throws as well. Could have been better. The one where we got the safety, we had a couple guys open over on the left side that would have liked to have gotten the ball quicker, the third down to Mazeo as well. He’ll be the first to tell you. But he’s just a guy that’s a super, super competitive guy. We gave him a game ball in there just because he made so many individual efforts. When you think we’re trying to run out the clock and there’s about three people getting ready to hit him, and he scrambles down the sideline and gets a first down a couple times and keeps us from having to punt the ball back to them. That was awesome to see. That’s who he is. And Bill Roth, to see him do that, that’s just who he is.”
What did you think of the way Fred played today? Led the team in tackles. Can you kind of just take us through what happened there on the interception where he doesn’t go to the end zone and gets the safety there?
“Poor coaching that he didn’t go down. He was awesome, first of all. Fred’s a big time player. Being from Virginia right there in Norfolk at right there from Maury High School, he was amped up. That’s what the
players said sideline to sideline. One of them said, man, he’s on a frickin’ mission today, and that’s the way he played. So happy for him. That was really cool. What a play. That was a big stop obviously in the red zone to keep them from getting points there. You know, it’s something that we talkabout not bringing that thing out and going down.I think he kind of got caught up in the moment. Hindsight being 20/20, go down as well. It’s hard to fault him in some of those situations when you’re just — he was a heck of an
offensive player in high school. I guess he just envisioned running that thing back 102 yards for a touchdown too, so who knows?”
You talked a lot about toughness, tough football teams throughout your career. In a game like this, how do you gauge the toughness of your team? How did you see that develop throughout the course of it? When you go back and look at the tape, what are you looking for?
Physical, tough, mentally and physically. Early in the game I thought we were doing that. There were some ugly runs, but if you look up on a lot of those plays, our offensive linemen had Virginia Tech guys
on the ground as well. For the most part did a good job stopping the run, which is a challenge. I mean, Drones is a load back there and he’s hard to bring down. He’s a heck of a player and whatnot. But I was proud of them, the mental toughness to just hang in there and not get frustrated at one another or anything and just continue to battle and get stronger. We knew this was a physical team. Jarrett Ferguson is running the strength and conditioning program now. Jarrett was a teammate of mine. Jarrett was the associate strength and conditioning coach with my dad, and so I know what they’re about. Brent Pry knows what Virginia Tech is about. I think he’s got like nine of my dad’s former players on his staff right now. They know what it’s about. It’s that lunchpail mentality that permeates through that program. We knew it was going to be a battle. We knew we had to be physical and tough as well, and we certainly did that. Especially as the game went on and our depth and size kind of took over a little bit in the second half.”
You lost so much off your defense last year. Maybe that was one of the big question marks coming
into the season. Yet you go out, and your defense doesn’t allow a touchdown today. What did you see out there from that group in terms of the new guys you plugged in and just the way they played together for the first time in a game?
“I was proud of them. They battled. I like our group. Obviously losing Judge like I said was tough so early in the game. We have depth. I’ve been saying it all along, that particularly at linebacker and defensive back we have more depth than we had last year, meaning we have more guys we feel comfortable putting in a game as well. Those guys for first down, when you think about it, we’re sitting on the plane yesterday and I’m watching Alabama-Florida State, and I’m looking across the aisle, and there’s Shawn Murphy and J.O., who were playing for Alabama and Florida State last year. It was Twilight Zone. I say that meaning that was their first game as a South Carolina Gamecock, those two guys, and a lot of those new faces. We’ll continue to get better overall. Thought we played a lot of guys up front. Got to be able to continue to find ways to generate pressure on the quarterback because teams aren’t going to sit back there all day and they’re going to get rid of the ball quickly. We’ve got to generate pressure on the quarterback. We’ve got to continue to find ways to win those 50-50 balls at defensive back. But to not allow a touchdown against a good offense too, is really, really — our mantra is just put the ball down. I thought like those guys continued to put the ball down and get stops. It was really cool to see those guys do that, and I’ll be eager to watch the tape and get back to work this week in practice and continue to find ways to get better.”
This felt like Beamer Ball, special teams, defense, making the splash. Did you feel that from your
perspective? Did Frank feel that way as well?
“I hope he did. I told Chris, the sideline reporter for ABC after Vicari’s touchdown, I told her, it’s so many Virginia Tech games where offense is ugly and special teams finally says, all right, we’re tired of watching this. We’re just going to go score ourselves, and that’s what we did. Then the defense made stops, and the offense lined up and ran the ball there at the end of the game to finish it. So it was really neat. If you could have scripted it, you would have scripted it like that. To score on special teams was pretty special without a doubt, especially playing Virginia Tech and with them being here.”
You get about five yards in your first five carries from running backs in the game, but then after the first quarter, Rahsul and Oscar made a lot of plays. What did you see from them making the adjustment after you got stopped?
“Yeah, the first was pretty good to go right down the field and score the way we did. Okay, heck of a start. Then it got ugly from there towards the end of the half, I guess. I guess those guys continued to battle. We knew — and we told our players early in the week in terms of a staff — we knew there were going to be ugly runs, dirty runs we call it, meaning there’s unblocked guys. You’re not sure what their defense is going to be. They’ve got good players. The two linebackers are really athletic. The two defensive tackles are good football players. Gilliam, No. 22. When I was at Oklahoma we recruited him to Oklahoma. Kelvin is a good player. They’re going to be active up front. We told those guys there’s going to be runs early, keep battling. Those guys really did a nice job. Oscar had some really good individual efforts when he got blocked, and he got more than what was there, the screen he had, and a couple of runs. ‘Sul, a heck of a run throughout the day as well.
Going off the toughness of this team today, how good is it for them going forward this season that in this first week they had to face some adversity, face a little bit of scoreboard pressure, and they ultimately got through it?
“So good. I told them that in the locker room, it’s a heck of a win, it really is. To have some guys that were down with some injuries, to be in an environment like this against a team that returned a lot off last year’s
team, meaning Virginia Tech, that had this game circled on your calendar. Like I’ve been in their shoes. It was basically us the entire off-season of 2024, where everybody is telling them how much they stink and they’re not going to be very good. They watched College GameDay yesterday. They saw everybody on the GameDay set pick South Carolina to win big. We knew it was going to be a battle — or I did. I hope
everybody else on our team did, knew it was going to be a battle. We talked about it, meeting with kind of our leadership group earlier in the week. We gave them some scenarios. It’s an old Michael Phelps the swimmer used to talk about before races, go over the race in his head, talk about how it should go, how it could go, and how you don’t want it to go. We met with our leaders this week, and we talked about that. One of the things we said that it could go, it’s ugly for a while. We’ve got to hang in there and push through the adversity and stay close and stay together and get to the second half, and we’ll be okay. I told them at halftime, what we talked about earlier in the week, so really proud of their mental and physical toughness to hang in there and just keep getting stronger.”
Going into the season, you had a big question on your kicking game, and your young kicker’s first game today. Mason averaged 47.8 a punt. You made your only field goal today. Talk a little about your kickers and snappers.
“Proud of them. I kid with Joe D, but always right before the game, when we come off the field right before pregame warmups, I asked him how he looked in pregame because I was scared to watch with some of the snappers and holders and kickers and punters just because it was their first game. It’s scary in so many ways. When we punted today, it’s the first time since I’ve been the head football coach at South Carolina that Kai Kroeger did not punt. I have a new snapper, a new holder, a new field goal kicker, a new punt returner, a new punter and kick returner, everything. It’s all new.
“That’s a little unnerving, especially in an environment like this against a good team that’s good on special teams. I thought they did a great job. William came in, hit a nice field goal right there where you thought we had a touchdown. Then you’ve got to regroup and go hit the field goal. Mason did a nice job. We didn’t think we’d have to punt after a safety, but he came in and did that and did a nice job. I thought our coverage units were good as well. So proud of — I thought we did a good job, and like every position offense and defense, there will be a lot to build upon as well.”