Shane Beamer admits to being a fan of South Carolina being in Way-Too-Early Top-25 polls

Shane Beamer is all good, at least to an extent, with the preseason expectations for South Carolina.

Beamer addressed the Gamecocks beginning to appear on Top-25 rankings ahead of next season while at the men’s basketball game in Columbia on Saturday. Regardless of the praise, he joked that it’s a lot better than criticism going into the year.

“It beats seeing my name on, like, hot-seat lists and not ranked,” Beamer laughed. “Yeah, I’ll be honest.”

It is worth it, though, to have those already anticipating big things from your team with seven months until kickoff.

“It’s one of those – you want to be at a place with high expectations,” said Beamer. “You want to be at a place where there’s momentum and confidence in the team each and every year.”

Among those who have rated South Carolina in the Top-25, if not the Top-10, are names like On3’s Andy Staples as well as ESPN’s Mark Schlabach and Pro Football Focus.

With that said, Beamer also isn’t too interested in those considering how those lists are made. He remembers last offseason as well when he and his team were also on those less-approving lists before proving their ratings wrong.

“Also understanding that none of that matters because all these projections that people do, that you guys do? It’s based on how the season went before and, usually, do they return their quarterback?” Beamer said. “Everybody thought we were going to stink this year because we lost our quarterback and we went 5-7 in ’23. Now, everybody thinks we’re going to be really good, and we have a chance to be, because we return our quarterback and we won nine games in the regular season.”

“It’s also understanding that it’s a lot of new faces. We lost a lot of really good players…But, also, and we’ve talked about it as a team. Just understanding that, you know, I went back and just showed the guys a couple of weeks ago in a team meeting literally all the projections from last year. Very few of them were very good about us as well,” recalled Beamer. “Just understanding that, worry about what we can control. That’s just our guys working really really hard each and every day to be the best team we can be.”

The Gamecocks will have to prove it again after their best finish in seven seasons. Still, Beamer would rather be ranked somewhere than not ranked at all going into the fall.

“I do like that…You always want to be in those preseason rankings each and every year.”

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