Shane Beamer Previews Georgia Matchup
No matter what field you work in, we all can agree that competing against a former mentor can be a little bit awkward. This is the life of the head coach of a power five football program, and Shane Beamer will have to go through that this coming Saturday when his South Carolina Gamecocks take on Kirby Smart's Georgia Bulldogs.
Beamer was an assistant on Georgia's coaching staff in Kirby Smart's first two years as the headman in Athens. When asked if there was anything he took away from his time at Georgia and implemented into his program, Shane Beamer was very forthright with his answer.
“Kirby Smart made me a better football coach. That was a really really beneficial two years to be with him. It was a great opportunity to one coach in a place like Georgia [and] live in a city like Athens, but to come in and see the whole Nick Saban [philosophy of] the process but see it implemented from day one... There’s a lot of things that we do here that are directly from things that I took from my time at Georgia… when you talk about all of the places that I’ve as a coach and coaches that I’ve taken things from as far as this organization and how we try and structure stuff, a lot of it came from my time with Kirby [Smart]."
While Beamer was highly complimentary of what Smart did for him as a football coach, that doesn't distract him from knowing that Georgia will be a significant challenge on Saturday, especially regarding the running game on both sides of the ball.
“It’s tough. We can sit here and say we wanna run the ball, well I think Georgia was No. 1 in the nation last year in stopping the run… These guys aren’t going to be easy to run the football on. We gotta work really hard as coaches to come up with a plan to run the ball cause it’s gonna be a long day Saturday if we’re not able to run the ball a little bit against these guys. That’s just a fact. And then also be able to stop the run, because frankly Georgia is watching our tape from that Arkansas game last Saturday and probably feeling really good about being able to get up and hand the ball off to those big running backs that they got over in Athens right now."
Knowing just how tough of a test this will be for his team, Coach Beamer put out a call to action for Gamecock Nation and wants them to show up and be loud despite the early kick time.
“I know there was a lot of people that wanted this to be a night game, frankly, no one cares. It’s a noon game. We set the standard for what Williams-Brice Stadium should be like against Georgia State, so we’re not all of the sudden going to be less than that on Saturday at noon because we’re disappointed it’s not a night game. [We've] got a great opportunity for our fanbase to show the entire country on national television what Williams-Brice stadium and a game-day at South Carolina is like. It should be even better than what it was for the Georgia State game… We need that place to be absolutely rocking on Saturday.”
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