Gamecocks looking for 'the guy' to separate himself at running back
Despite having to replace his two leading rushers from last year, South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer goes into the 2022 season feeling confident about his running back room as a whole.
The Gamecocks essentially rotated four backs last year, with a different player taking the leading role at various times in the season and Kevin Harris and ZaQuandre White ultimately preserving the top two spots.
Gone are Harris and White but the Gamecocks return MarShawn Lloyd — now back fully healthy after knee surgery in 2020 — and Juju McDowell plus have added transfers Christian Beal-Smith and Lovasea Carroll to the group. Rashad Amos also had a productive spring after redshirting in 2021.
Needless to say, Beamer likes his depth.
Now he’s looking for his lead back.
“The biggest thing, the one constant in all of those meetings with the running backs was, we’ve got a ton of depth at that running back position right now and we’re still trying to figure out who’s going to separate themselves from the others and say, ‘Okay, that’s the guy,’ whoever it may be, and they’ll all have that opportunity,” Beamer said Thursday night at the Sumter stop for the Welcome Home tour. “The summer is going to be really critical for them in the weight room and on the field and in the meeting room and all that as well to see where that separation comes from.”
Beamer was asked specifically about Lloyd and Beal-Smith, the two most experienced running backs on the roster and potentially the top two backs this season, though McDowell may have his say in that conversation too.
“For one, continuing to be leaders because they are the oldest guys in that room,” Beamer said, referring to the end-of-spring conversations he had with both players. “Now, Christian hasn’t played for us but he’s played a lot of football obviously at Wake Forest. MarShawn hasn’t played a ton here but he is in his third year in the program here, so from that standpoint, he is an older guy.
“The thing we talked to them about was, one, continuing to be great leaders, and then for both of those guys, how critical the summer will be, that they’ve put themselves in position coming out of spring practice where we can certainly say these guys are guys that can lead the way and be leaders in that running back room, now they’ve got to continue to do that this summer and in the preseason camp as well.”
Lloyd, the former five-star playmaker from Delaware, appeared to be taking the bulk of the first-team reps in the spring in the portions of practice that were open to the media.
Additionally, Lloyd was a starter for one unit in the Garnet and Black spring game with Beal-Smith taking the first reps with the other — potentially giving credence to the thought that they could be the Gamecocks’ top two backs.
While that depth is certainly valuable, South Carolina likely doesn’t want to go into the season with a four-man rotation again.
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The next few months will determine who’s going to be “the guy.”
“Each and every one of them, when I sat down with them, it was, ‘Here’s where you are, here’s the areas you need to improve, here’s where your strengths are right now, here’s your role right now, here’s what we need to see from you over there summer,'” Beamer said. “So, each and every running back — and we’ve got a lot of them — we all had those meetings with (them).”
