Halftime interviews with coaches don’t always produce a lot of notable quotes, but there are certainly times where they do. One particularly interesting one came from the South Carolina Gamecocks-Georgia Bulldogs game Saturday, where the unranked Gamecocks led the No. 1 Bulldogs 14-3 at the half. That saw CBS sideline reporter Jenny Dell relay some confidence from South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer shortly after the half, but that confidence did not hold up:
"We're kicking their butts right now, we just need to keep on going," South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer told CBS' Jenny Dell at halftime.
Georgia scored 21 unanswered points in the second half and shut out the Gamecocks for a 24-14 victory.
Ouch. pic.twitter.com/Ewke2O39A1
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 16, 2023
In fairness, yes, the Gamecocks were kicking the Bulldogs’ butts at that point. And “we just need to keep on going” was an accurate statement of what South Carolina needed to continue to do. But they proved rather spectacularly unable to do just that. And while that’s maybe to be expected in a road game against the top-ranked team in the country, and while many Gamecocks’ fans would have been fine with a 10-point loss heading into this (they were a 27.5 point underdog), the hope here may have been some of what killed them.
It hasn’t been a great season for South Carolina so far, with the Gamecocks falling to 1-2 after this loss. They came into this year with some expectations, with quarterback Spencer Rattler (a transfer from the Oklahoma Sooners) helping them to an 8-5 season. That was a one-win improvement over their 7-6 mark in 2021, Beamer’s first season, which itself was a significant improvement from their 2-8 mark in 2020 under Will Muschamp and Mike Bobo (and which came with a mayo bath, and pushback against CBS’ Dennis Dodd).
But South Carolina is now 1-2 on the season, with a season-opening loss to the North Carolina Tar Heels and a 47-21 win over the FCS Furman Paladins last week in addition to this loss to the Bulldogs. And while they did wind up kicking the Bulldogs’ butts for half of a game Saturday, that didn’t lead to a win. We’ll see if they can find a better result next week at home against another group of Bulldogs, the ones from Mississippi State.
[Awful Announcing on Twitter]
