Shane Beamer reacts: What South Carolina coach said after blowout loss vs. Clemson
Shane Beamer felt the need to apologize to South Carolina football fans Saturday night after the Gamecocks (6-6) fell to No. 23 Clemson (9-3) in a 30-0 shutout loss for its last regular season game of 2021.
“I want to apologize to our fans for that performance,” Beamer said in his postgame press conference. “It starts with me as the head coach. At Gamecock Walk before the game, I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of anything like that in my entire coaching career — the electricity, the energy in that stadium was amazing, and I appreciate what our fans did. We challenged them and they were awesome tonight. And sorry we didn’t play better for you.”
The Gamecocks’ woeful offensive resurfaced once again against the Tigers, totaling their second-lowest total yardage (206), better than only the Texas A&M game on Oct. 23 (185 yards).
South Carolina rushers were held to their season-low run game total, accumulating 43 yards. It was the fifth time in 12 games that the Gamecocks weren’t able to earn more than 100 yards on the ground.
Defensively, USC struggled to contain Clemson’s rushing attack, allowing the second-most yards to an opponent on the ground in 2021 against Clemson (265). South Carolina came into its season finale allowing 171.1 yards per game, but the Tigers had already surmounted that
Here’s more of what Beamer had to say in his postgame press conference.
Opening statement on the state of the team: “That’s a hurt locker room in there right now. Hurt for our seniors. Just told them the locker room, everybody’s disappointed, we hurt. There’s a lot of tears in that locker room right now. We’re not going to let one game define this group. We’ve done way too many good things and fought our butts off throughout the season to be sitting here at six wins. This is a critical month coming up for us in December.
“Thank God we are bowl eligible. It’s a great accomplishment for this football team, and I’m so happy that we get another month together as a football team. And we’ve got to get better and continue to improve. This is just the beginning of Carolina football. We’re not going anywhere, only continuing to get better and continuing to work so we don’t have night like these.
“Got off to a horrific start. Not good football, not good coaching, not good playing. Just way too many mistakes offensively and defensively in that first quarter. And just got ourselves in a hole. Like we have all year, we continued to fight and battle. But we’re not into moral victories around here. We got to play better, got to coach better and wasn’t good enough tonight.”
On making coaching staff changes after the regular season: “We just walked off the field. We’ll evaluate the football team after the season. I mean, we won a game last week, and we’re ready to anoint people coach of the year, and we had a bad night. So like we do at the end of every season, I will sit down with (athletics director Ray) Tanner and (senior deputy athletic director) Chance Miller and look at what the best thing for our program is going forward. The thing I’m excited about doing is getting on the road recruiting tomorrow, meeting with the team and learning from this one like we always do.”
On Clemson’s defense: “They’re really, really good. They’ve got guys all over that defensive line that were recruited by everybody in the country, and they’re extremely, extremely well coached. I mean, they play hard, they are in the right place at the right time. They do so much defensively. My hat’s off to them because they’re able to execute so many different things, and it’s hard to get a bead on them and what they’re doing. They do a great job coaching, and it showed tonight.”
On the offensive game plan/frustrations with the offense: “Yeah, extremely frustrating. And we knew it was going to be a challenge coming into this thing. (Clemson is) really good defensively, and they’ve been a problem for everybody. We knew they were disruptive. I told you guys on Tuesday, I mean, their defense is top four in the nation in sacks, and they’re top four in the nation in tackles for loss. They’re one of the best defenses in the country and they showed it tonight. I liked our plan going in, really felt like we were gonna be able to run the football, and we weren’t able to. We weren’t able to do much of much of anything, but really did feel good about it going into it.”
On his message to Gamecock fans as South Carolina is 0-7 in last meetings vs. Clemson: “Nobody’s happy about the performance tonight. And like I said at the beginning ... I’m sorry we didn’t play better. They were amazing tonight. And I would just reiterate again, we’re not going anywhere, and we’re only going to continue to get better as a football program. Tonight was a great night for South Carolina, that you had an amazing environment in this stadium tonight. And this is a fantastic rivalry. It’s one of the greatest ones in college sports, and I wish we had played better for our fans. But Clemson’s not going anywhere. They’re continuing to recruit at a high level, and we’re not going anywhere. We’re continuing to recruit at a high level and continuing to get better. And there’s been way too many good things this season. I know we all wanted this one really, really bad. This is the fifth time I’ve coached in this rivalry, and I know how bitter and heated it is. I hate it for our fans. But we’re coming. We’ll get there.”
This story was originally published November 27, 2021 at 11:41 PM.
