Shane Beamer addresses what ceiling is at South Carolina

South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer went from head-scratching hire by some pundits to one of the SEC’s best success stories in just one season, and according to Beamer, he’s just getting started.

Beamer, formerly the tight ends coach at Oklahoma, is the son of legendary Virginia Tech head coach Frank Beamer, and despite a complete lack of head coaching experience, Beamer was hired by South Carolina to succeed Will Muschamp. The Gamecocks had serious deficiencies on their depth chart, perhaps none more glaring than at quarterback, but Beamer paid no mind to projections — he far exceeded South Carolina’s over/under win total of 3.5, going 6-6 with a Duke’s Mayo Bowl win in his first season at the helm, and he managed to navigate the storm with whatever personnel he had, even if that meant using grad transfer-turned-walk-on Zeb Noland at quarterback.

“Stay patient,” Beamer said on The Paul Finebaum Show, when asked what his message for South Carolina fans would be. “I believe there is no ceiling and I meant what I said in the beginning responding to Darius (Rucker, on the Paul Finebaum Show): we can accomplish everything we need to here. And you see what Dawn Staley did with women’s basketball, winning a national championship, you see Ray Tanner winning a national championship in baseball, and other sports here at Carolina. We have everything that we need here to be successful, but you also better understand that you play in the most competitive conference in the country.”

Now, Beamer is again poised for success in year two. This time, he has a deep roster to back it up. South Carolina program was one of the greatest beneficiaries of an ever-expanding pool of departing players in the NCAA Transfer Portal, as Beamer picked up a pair of his former players at Oklahoma.

Former five-star quarterback Spencer Rattler, who in 2020 looked poised to be a Heisman Trophy candidate this past season, transferred to South Carolina. So too did former five-star tight end Austin Stogner, who worked under Beamer when he was the tight end coach at Oklahoma, giving Beamer one of the strongest Transfer Portal classes in the country.

“People are getting excited because there’s been some of those preseason polls that have come out that have us ranked in the top 25,” Beamer said. “And I look at it and see that eight of our opponents are ranked in some of those preseason polls higher than us, so we know that we certainly did a lot of great things this past season. We’re not happy with being 7-6, that’s not the end goal, but it was a great start. But we also understand the amount of work that it took to win seven games, and it’s going to take that much more to take the next step to the next level here at South Carolina.”