Shane Beamer details what will go into South Carolina overcoming last season's struggles

During the 2024 SEC Media Days, head coach Shane Beamer shared what he thinks it will take to get back to playing winning football. Through the highs and lows of his coaching career at Carolina, Beamer recognizes the work that goes into winning.

“I think just continuing the work,” Beamer said. “You know, I get it. 5-7 last year is not what anybody expected. We were here last year and somewhat of a feel-good story, and some of you guys were picking us to be a dark horse team in the SEC.”

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The 2022 season was South Carolina’s best under Beamer with the team going 8-5 (4-4 SEC). While Beamer holds a 20-18 record as the head coach of the Gamecocks, some fans were left underwhelmed after last season.

“We went 5-7. Ultimately that’s my responsibility,” Beamer said. “But I also look at it that we weren’t that far away from the narrative being completely different as well.”

Beamer shared his plans of how to turn last seasons losses into learning experiences for his team.

“When the season is over, like every head coach, I sit back and look at everything that we’re doing and where do we need to tweak, adjust, be better,” Beamer said. “Feel like we’ve done that, whether it be how we do things in our building each and every day, coaching staff, players we brought in, players that left our program in some ways as well.”

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South Carolina will be returning plenty of talent on both sides of the ball. It also brought in some transfers and incoming freshmen to help fill in the gaps. And that’s the first step to getting back on track, Beamer said.

“It starts with having good players, and a lot of guys that were a part of those two wins are still in our program,” Beamer said. We’ve got a lot of guys that have come back in ’24. Because they know that we are better than what we showed last season. Somebody told me earlier Debo (Williams) said we’re not hungry, we’re starving.”

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Players are already pushing the expectation bar higher preparing for the new season. Beamer said running back Rocket Sanders stayed in Columbia during May for extra practice, a month many players go home to rest. And he hopes that type of attitude will follow suit with the whole team this year.

“The way they’ve worked since January has shown me that,” Beamer said. “We can’t sit here and talk about it. We just got to work. But I know we got the right group of people in our program and we are very hungry and eager to get going.”