Gamecocks Trying To Maintain Focus Amidst Winning Streak
Whether you are succeeding or failing at anything in life, there are inherent consequences that come with the results. If you're failing, it may cause you to lose out on certain opportunities, while if you're winning, you suddenly will find yourself gaining hoards of attention that you don't want from other people.
South Carolina's football team is now experiencing that latter portion of that scenario because they've ended many streaks in recent weeks. Two weeks ago, they defeated Kentucky in Lexington for the first time in a decade, and last week they got their first-ever win in nine tries against the Texas A&M Aggies.
The program is now ranked for the first time since 2018 and is seeing its first four-game winning streak since 2013, which has made people wonder if the players might be getting too giddy in light of these feats. According to Shane Beamer, everything's remaining business as usual.
"They’ve been really good," Beamer stated at his Tuesday press conference. "Obviously [there was] a lot of energy and excitement here in the building on Sunday, but you know they’re motivated to get back to work. Yesterday was their off day... and then we had a really good practice this morning, and we talked about it. I mean obviously we’re excited about where we are, but the only ranking that matters is the end of the season, and we got a lot more in front of us.... We gotta continue to get better, and that’s what we’re really focusing on right now is getting better as a team.”
One player who's helped keep some of the players on track mentally is sixth-year linebacker Brad Johnson, who said on Tuesday that the team has tried to maintain a sense of tunnel vision all season, with the difference now being what they're blocking out.
"Coming into the season, I don’t wanna say we were expecting some notoriety, but we expected at least some type of respect, and I felt like at the beginning of the season, us as a team, we really didn’t feel like we received any respect," Johnson recalled. "Now we’re starting to get pats on the back, but the same way where we [had] blinders on trying to stay focused on what we had to do in order to receive that, [it’s] the same thing we’re doing now [by putting] blinders on and we’re blocking all that out because coach Beamer has been emphasizing resisting comfort… Every week is a new season. That’s how we’re looking at that.”
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