Gamecock Defense Continues Turnoverfest

After a slow start this season forcing turnovers, the South Carolina Gamecocks' defense seems to have regained its mojo.

No one would have blamed you if you were beginning to worry about the Gamecock defense's ability to turn the offense over. Last week against Charlotte, the Gamecocks managed to collect three interceptions, showing glimpses of the magic they had in 2021, and now against South Carolina State, it seems like the results from last week have now been validated.

On Thursday night against South Carolina State, three separate Gamecocks managed to record an interception, making it the second straight week in which the defense has forced three turnovers, all through the air. During his postgame press conference, head coach Shane Beamer spoke about what the staff might do to sustain this trend, and Beamer said while they talk about it, it comes down to some simple facets.

"No, we talk about it. We just gave out three game balls in the locker room to three guys that got turnovers, so we certainly want to celebrate it, and we told them when we weren't getting them early in the season, we didn't make a big deal about it," Beamer explained. "We just talked about continuing to be in the right place and continue to play really, really hard and be around the football, and when you fly to the football, and you play hard, those turnovers tend to come. We're certainly going to need them going forward as well, would love to get a lot more in the first half. That would be nice."

Of course, there's an adage showing what your character or work ethic consists of that you have to practice what you preach, and when it comes to turnovers, that's something the staff tries to keep in the minds of Gamecock defenders whenever they're at work.

"We emphasize it every day in practice with drills that we do, offense versus defense and things like that. So we need to keep it coming, and there's a reason we led the SEC in takeaways last year defensively, you know we work at it, and we emphasize it, and we gotta get back to that," Beamer expressed. "We put ourselves in a little bit of a hole to begin the season. We've got to claw out so we can get back ahead in that stat, [and] we gotta quit turning the ball over ourselves."

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