Shane Beamer describes magnitude of South Carolina’s upsets vs. Tennessee, Clemson

The 2022 season was a momentum building campaign for South Carolina.

The Gamecocks pulled off back-to-back upsets of top-10 teams to close the regular season with victories against No. 5 Tennessee and No. 8 Clemson en route to an 8-5 mark.

South Carolina head coach Shame Beamer discussed the significance of each upset on the SEC Network’s Marty And McGee show.

After the 63-38 rout against Tennessee, Beamer crouched in the locker room in astonishment of the accomplishment.

“It was just the magnitude of that moment,” Beamer said. “A win like that on a Saturday night in Columbia with Tennessee. You can’t put words into how much it meant.”

Beamer was effusive in his praise for the resiliency of his players to respond in a commanding way after losing by 32 at Florida the previous week.

“For me, it was really just kind of sitting down and just thinking about how honestly in that moment just how proud I was of our players because of how poorly we performed the week before against Florida,” Beamer said. “Nobody listened to the outside narrative about how bad we’re going to get beat by Tennessee. To come out and perform like we did, it was just a really cool moment.”

As for the 31-30 win at Clemson, it held a particularly special meaning because his dad, Virginia Tech coaching legend Frank Beamer, was in attendance with the rest of his family.

“He’s had some big wins in that stadium as the head coach at Virginia Tech and I was in the stands watching,” Beamer said. “To be able to do that and share it with him and my mom and my whole family was pretty cool too.”

Despite ending the season ranked No. 23 in the AP poll, Beamer is adamant that South Carolina will need to up its game in order to contend in the conference this season.

“Be better in every area. Don’t just assume: ‘It worked this way last year, so everything is going to be the same.’ It’s a new year and we’ve got to be better in every department…,” Beamer said. “We did some great things last season. There’s a lot in things we need to improve on as well.”