Beamer Ball Faces Biggest Challenge
One of the primary reasons South Carolina won eight games in the 2022 regular season was Beamer Ball 2.0, which relies on effective and holistic special teams play and finds ways to steal yards and subsequent possessions from the opponent.
Through the guidance of special teams coordinator Pete Lembo the Gamecocks have progressed significantly on that side of the ball over the past two years. Varying analytical metrics rate them as the most efficient special teams unit in all college football.
On this rare occasion, the garnet and black will face a unit almost on equal footing with them. Notre Dame is also rated as a top ten team in terms of special teams efficiency, making them the best unit South Carolina has faced all year.
Last Thursday, Lembo made it clear to the media that he thinks highly of the Fighting Irish and how their special teams unit looks, plays, and stresses their opponents.
"This is an outstanding special teams unit. When you look at their team in general, they are a very big, physical, rugged hard-playing team, and that is very much reflected on their special teams units... They create some really challenging matchups for you with their physicality, their effort, their length."
Lembo has mentioned you can tell how a team locks in during a game based on the effort given on plays such as PATs. With Notre Dame, this isn't an issue to any degree.
"They strain in coverage, they strain to block field goals, they strain to block punts... I mean these guys have blocked more punts than anybody in the country, as many punts as Jerry Seinfeld had girlfriends.”
Getting past the 90's sitcom references, Notre Dame comes into this game leading the country in blocked punts, having registered seven up to this point in the season under first-year special teams coordinator Brian Mason.
In a game that could very well come down to just a few plays, the battle between these special teams units could decide the eventual winner, which, according to Lembo, is especially prevalent when playing these bowl games.
“A lot of these games turn out to be like the early season games, where special teams gets magnified. The things that you might do to beat yourself get magnified in all three phases of the game.”
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