The week started with South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer telling the media that they were running out of room on the bandwagon ahead of the Gamecocks matchup against LSU.
But after South Carolina blew an early 17-0 lead and fell 36-33 to the 16th-ranked Tigers at Williams-Brice Stadium, Beamer was apologizing to the Gamecock fans left on the bandwagon.
“I want to apologize to our fans. Thirteen penalties,” Beamer said in his postgame press conference. “Not going to win football games in the SEC with 13 penalties. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen two defensive touchdowns come back because of penalties.”
It was perhaps the biggest game of Beamer’s four years in Columbia with ESPN’s College Gameday in town following South Carolina’s blowout victory at Kentucky a week before.
The Gamecocks came out buzzing, jumping out to an early 17-0 lead when they blocked a kick and returned it for a touchdown in the second quarter. But LSU slowly chipped away before taking a three-point lead on a touchdown with 1:12 remaining.
Two of the biggest plays in the game were the two penalties that Beamer mentioned. LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier threw a pick six in the first half that officials overturned due to a horse caller penalty. A fourth quarter pick six that would have made it a two possession game was called back due to an illegal hit on the Nussmeier during the return.
While Beamer said that it wasn’t a “vicious” hit on Nussmeier “by any stretch of the imagination”, he wasn’t overall critical of the officials and instead focused on his own team’s penalty mistakes.
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“Not just the defensive penalties, I know those are the ones you guys are going to ask about, but offensively— big plays that came back because of receivers blocking down field when we shouldn’t be or linemen down field or the quarterback scrambles on a RPO,” Beamer said. “We have to be better there and that starts with me as the head football coach. From a penalty standpoint. We’ve been a disciplined group. It’s disappointing.”
Even after LSU took the late lead, South Carolina still put together a good drive and had a chance to force overtime with a field goal.
The Gamecocks had it second-and-10 at LSU’s 32-yard line with 18 seconds left. South Carolina had one timeout left and looked like they could run two more plays before trying a field goal. Instead, the Gamecocks ran it up the middle for one yard before calling a timeout and attempting the 49-yard field goal as time expired. Alex Herrara’s 49-yard field goal just missed wide left and LSU survived in the primetime matchup.
“Hindsight being 20/20 you try and run one more play right there because you have a timeout but also it was 20 seconds and we have our backup quarterback in there and we were down a couple receivers too cause Jared Brown was out at that point,” Beamer said. “Just felt like, we’re in field goal range and we have confidence in Alex and I certainly wanted to be aggressive but let’s be smart right here and kick the field goal.”
South Carolina falls to 2-1 on the season with the loss and is now 22-19 (11-15 SEC) in Shane Beamer’s three-plus seasons as head coach. With the new expanded SEC, Tennessee does not play South Carolina this season.
