Shane Beamer doubles down on halftime comment that he expected to lead Texas A&M

South Carolina led No. 3 Texas A&M 30-3 at halftime. The Aggies outscored the Gamecocks 28-0 in the second half to secure the largest comeback win in Texas A&M history. After the game, South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer said his team wasn’t surprised by the massive lead they had at halftime.

“I know the rest of the country was surprised with what was going on in the first half. We weren’t,” Beamer said. “If you’ve been watching us play all season, we had great confidence coming into this game. We fully expected to be in this game, fully expected it to be a four-quarter game and certainly, we got off to a great start. We had great confidence.

“I get it. Our record is what it is, but our guys also understood we won this game by 24 points last year. We had great confidence coming into this game for a lot of reasons, because there’s a lot of players that played out there today that were in that game last season.”

If Beamer wasn’t surprised, the rest of the country certainly was. The Gamecocks entered the game Saturday on a four-game losing streak. Most recently, South Carolina had suffered a demoralizing 30-14 loss against Ole Miss.

Meanwhile, Texas A&M entered the game undefeated. Beamer reveled in his team’s first-half success, firing up the crowd while walking back into the locker room at halftime.

Nonetheless, South Carolina crumbled in the back half of the game, recording just 76 total yards of offense in the second half. In contrast, Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed tallied 298 passing yards in the second half alone. Despite South Carolina’s sluggish second half, Shane Beamer insisted his team didn’t think the game was over at halftime.

“What a heck of a first half. Like I said, we weren’t surprised,” Beamer said. “Nobody came into the locker room at halftime celebrating, thinking the game was over, thinking that we could just go out there and coast in the second half. We talked about it at halftime. The scoreboard is irrelevant.

“Our whole mentality today was coming in here and dominating. When you’re dominating, you don’t look at the scoreboard when you’re trying to dominate something. You just keep going and that’s what we talked about. In the second half, just really disappointed with the way that we performed, coaches and players. … This one hurts to say the least. I know our guys will respond and we’ll come right back to Columbia. Got two home games left to finish this thing out.”