At home, with the Cockabooses presumably rocking pre-game and its season at something of a juncture point, South Carolina constructed a 10-point, fourth-quarter lead Saturday against visiting Florida.
Then something happened on the way to what would have been a season-leveling win: Shane Beamer's South Carolina Gamecocks melted down.
Down 37-27 with less than five minutes to play, Florida rallied for an 41-39 victory that gave second-year Gators coach Billy Napier wins this season against key SEC Eastern Division foes South Carolina and Tennessee.
Beamer, meanwhile, had his record atop the Gamecocks in Year 3 downgraded to just 17-15 overall and a scuffling 2-4 on this season. South Carolina has just one win in 2023 against an Football Bowls Subdivision opponent.
By game's end, Beamer lamented his team's execution -- or the lack of it.
"I saw the main problem, we call pressures and we don’t run them," Beamer bemoaned. "We play man coverage and didn’t do a great job of keeping leverage. Just in the first half alone, we ran a pressure where the corner came and for some reason he stopped.
"And we gave up an explosive pass because we didn’t continue to run the pressure. We had another pressure call where we didn’t run it in the first half. We had a holding penalty in the secondary in the first half. We had another pressure on third down backed up where we were going to be off the field in the first half and we didn’t execute it properly."
Beamer only was getting cranked up after the Gamecocks were gashed for 494 yards, 28 first downs and let Florida's offense rest on field for almost 33 minutes.
"We talk to our guys about not jumping around the quarterback; we jumped and got beat on a pump-fake," Beamer said. "We had an offsides in the first half. Just did not play clean football and then at the end of the day, we had some calls that were perfect calls. We ran an edge pressure; if somebody had said a team is getting ready to run a reverse, what would be the perfect call? You would bring both people off the edge. We had a perfect call sometimes and their guy made the play and we didn’t.
"We got good kids in that room, they’re going to continue to make those plays. We’ve got to continue to do a better job coaching them and putting them in position."
This season, the Gamecocks are running out of time to make said plays. South Carolina still has road games left at Missouri and Texas A&M, as well as home dates against Vanderbilt, Kentucky and Clemson, as well as FBS-transition program Jacksonville State.