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Shane Beamer says South Carolina is ‘sick of this feeling’ after near-upset
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Shane Beamer was asked after the game about South Carolina’s 4 turnovers in Saturday’s 27-25 loss to Alabama on the road. “You can’t go on the road in the SEC and turn the ball over,” he answered back pointedly.
The Gamecocks had a fumble in both the first and second quarters. They gave the football away twice in the fourth quarter — both in critical moments.
There was the fumble that came just 1 play after picking off Alabama in the endzone. South Carolina had a 19-14 lead at that point, and Alabama immediately scored after recovering. Then LaNorris Sellers was picked off after South Carolina recovered an onside kick in the final minute.
South Carolina gave Alabama everything it could handle. The Gamecocks outgained Alabama both in the game (374-313) and on a per-play basis (5.3 to 5.1). They Gamecocks ran it well, produced 4 sacks, and did well on third down.
“No one was surprised by our performance. We expected this. We competed our butts off — all 3 phases,” Beamer said. “Everybody expected to win the football game.”
But the Gamecocks just couldn’t overcome the self-inflicted mistakes.
“I hurt for them because we’re sick of this feeling, and they work too hard during the week to come in here on Saturdays and feel like that in that locker room.”
South Carolina is 3-3 on the season. The Gamecocks are 1-3 in conference play. Two of those losses have come by a combined 5 points, and both of those games featured South Carolina leads going into the fourth.
They’ve smashed Kentucky and been smashed by Ole Miss. The results have been a little all over the map, but Beamer insists he has a good football team that “competes their asses off.” Life in the SEC, he said, is just treacherous.
“People can put lines as what they want, talk about us how they want to talk about us. It’s amazing to me from Kentucky — the way we performed — the perception of our team was really, really high and then we had a crappy performance last Saturday and all of a sudden the narrative is we aren’t worth crap. And that’s not the case. We had a bad game last week. We played bad. … It doesn’t mean we were a bad team.
“We expected to win this game. Nobody was coming in here at halftime doing cartwheels because we were in a tight game with Alabama. We expected that because we have a good football team.”
They go to Norman next week to face a sputtering Oklahoma team with a chance to get back in the win column.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
