Tennessee (4-1, 1-1 SEC) defeated South Carolina (2-3, 1-2 SEC), 41-20, Saturday at Neyland Stadium.
South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer recapped the Gamecocks’ loss in Week 5.
“First of all, congratulations to Tennessee,” Beamer said. “They played really, really well. That was an awesome college football environment tonight. They made plays. We are going to look back on this thing, there were a lot of missed opportunities from our standpoint. Third downs and fourth downs that we didn’t convert. When you go 2-of-14 on third down and you go 2-of-5 on fourth down conversions, you make it tough on yourself. We sit there and we have a third down that early, I think on the first drive, run the route the wrong depth. We have a fourth down where the route depth is not where it needs to be. Those are two critical plays in the first half. We faked a punt and we have field position plus territory, get no points out of it. We give up a touchdown the opening drive to start the second half.
“Proud of our players, the way they battled, fourth down and inches and we can’t get six inches on a fourth down. It’s disappointing. Field position was tough all night. Having said that, we cut it to a two-score game with nine minutes left in the game. We allow them to go 75 yards right down the field for a touchdown, which was disappointing. Proud of the effort of our guys, but we did not play well enough to win the game. When you’re on the road in the SEC, you got to capitalize on your opportunities, and we didn’t do a great job of capitalizing on our opportunities tonight.”
PHOTOS: Tennessee defeats South Carolina in dark mode uniforms
