Everything Coastal Carolina coach Tim Beck said after South Carolina loss

Following a 51-7 loss to South Carolina on Saturday, Coastal Carolina head coach Tim Beck spoke to the media at Williams-Brice Stadium. Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening statement

“Congratulations, Coach (Shane) Beamer and South Carolina. I mean, they did a good job tonight. We dug a tremendous hole, and they took advantage of it.”

You talk about the first place from scrimmage on the Sellers to Sellers touchdown. Did that feel like it let the air out of the balloon right from the get-go?

“Yeah, a little bit. We had field pressure, so we’re bringing the same backer, rotating the safety down, and playing cover three, and they had four guys that went to unbalanced quads. And it was a good play call against a bad defensive call. They got us. They got us by our number. They cracked the hell out of our safety corner, didn’t get off the block, and whatever, how many 78 yards later, 7-0. And it was a combination of just happen chance. But yeah, I think it fired them up. I think it took some wind out of our sails. Certainly, I think we were a little shell-shocked in the first quarter.

“I think our guys settled down better in the second quarter and certainly in the second half, but it took us a while. There’s a lot of guys on our football team who have probably never seen this many people ever, so I thought we’d be okay. But it’s hard to simulate that. It’s hard to simulate (LaNorris) Sellers at quarterback. I love Jon Hunt to death, but there’s a little bit of difference between the two of them. But I’m proud of our team. I’m proud of the way our guys continue to fight and compete. I’m not going to be ashamed of that ever. They kept playing and kept trying and kept fighting. We had opportunities. We just didn’t make the most of them when we did move the football down the field. And you can’t do that. I mean, you can’t do that against a team like this.”

You talked earlier in the week about playing a complete game and not having too many mistakes. It seemed like there were some mistakes made…

“Yeah. Like I said, they got us the first time, really. We missed a lot of tackles on defense. Our perimeter was not what it had been, in terms of boxing things in, spelling it, keeping back end contained to let the defense rally to it. We missed a lot of tackles, which created big plays. Didn’t play the screen game very well, something that they executed better than we did in crucial times, and created big plays for them. Kept them on the field. It wasn’t as much they threw the ball down the field as it was a screen game that hurt us.”

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Defensively, these last two losses have seen your team give up over 40 points. What do you guys need to clean up before getting ready for James Madison next week?

“Well, again, like, I mean, our guys are in there fighting, you know what I mean? You’re without your senior captains, Shane Bruce and Wyatt (Gedeon). I had a couple of defensive players that I suspended for the game. I just think that overall our guys are out there, and they’re playing as hard as they can play, we’ve got to make some plays when we’re in the position to make the play. Sometimes we’re not in those positions. It’s from some youngness and playing some newer guys, or rotating them. We’re teaching some guys at multiple positions right now because of the lack of depth that we have with some of the injuries. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to shore things out. We’ve got to keep the ball in front of us. We got to run to the football, and we got to tackle. We can’t tackle. Doesn’t matter who you got out there, how many you got out there, right? They’re going to move the ball down the field. They’re going to score. And we have to continue to be better at that.”

South Carolina’s speed on defense. Was that a determining factor in this game?

“Yeah, a little bit. I thought there were some things. It was tough treading in there. The two inside guys are good. Two defensive ends got a lot of pressure, as we saw early on, Tad (Hudson) on, DJ Jones when he came around, DJ, left tackle. Our goal was to try to get him to run a little bit, play with some tempo. I thought we had some success with it. We just didn’t finish the jobs. We had opportunities to change the complexity of the game. Maybe there’s a little more pressure on them. Maybe, you know, it’s not as easy sledding for them. But, I mean, typical night, we miss our field goal, they make theirs in two minutes, like that’s and he had plenty of leg. We just missed it, you know, and they make theirs on a deep pass that Se’Von (McDowell) is playing Sam linebacker now, and didn’t get to the correct deep enough drop to where he needed to be, and they converted it.”

How frustrating is it to watch this defense that played so well early on in the season, now that you’re on the backside, they’ve struggled in back-to-back games?

“I think everybody’s frustrated a little bit, perplexed, because I’ve seen those guys, seen Avyonne Jones make great plays, you know, I’ve seen him do that beginning of the year, and not just Avyonne, but it’s the defense in general. I’ve seen us stop the run. I’ve seen us play good against the pass, and we’re not doing those things right now. So I’ve been trying to figure out what’s the missing ingredient to get that confidence back. I think there’s a little bit of a lack of confidence in them right now and swagger that we had the beginning of the year. That’s kind of where you’re at, but you’re in a position right now, and with one game less than the regular season, it’s not a whole lot you can do to change everything, right? You have to just continue to work to get better at the things that are hurting us, which is what we talked about earlier.”

Seems to be mistakes that continue to pile on throughout the season…

“Yeah, it’s hard. I mean, you can’t play for them at the end of the day. You could put them in position. Sometimes, guys have got to make the plays. And they made some plays today, and we’ve been in games where we’ve had perfect coverage and a guy jumps up, catches the ball over our guy. Like, what do you tell him? Like, cover him better. Like he’s all over him, and he made a great play. There’s some of that. It’s different things, right? It’s a guy not fit in the gap one time. It’s a formation adjustment we hadn’t seen. Guy doesn’t get to the right fit. It’s a good call by them on a call by us. I mean, it’s just a combination of things, and what you’ve got to do is just knock the ball down, just get the ball to the ground, and fight for the next play. The first play of the game, we probably had three guys who could have tackled them. None of them did. And so all you gotta do is try to live the fight, because they got us. They got us. And all you gotta do is like, hang on and try to get him down on the ground and live for the next fight. And we weren’t able to do that today.”

What did you see from Jameson Tucker on his blocked punt touchdown in the fourth quarter? Probably the biggest play of the game for you guys, right?

“Yeah, no doubt. And you love Jameson. I mean, that’s who he is. He’s the epitome of, really, all of our guys. They kept fighting. I mean, our guys kept playing hard. I don’t question that one bit. I think we started slow, and we dug a deep hole. As the game went on, we got a little more comfortable, got used to their speed, hard to simulate that, and we tackled a little better as the game went on, especially on the perimeter, and got him down and forced them to punt sometimes. I think that it’s just learning. I mean, it’s just continuing learning. We haven’t seen a team this fast and this big all season, and so it caught us definitely early.”

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