South Carolina’s coaching staff has had the better part of the last month to evaluate and gauge their roster this spring, but Saturday offered one of the biggest evaluation periods to date.

The Gamecocks scrimmaged for the first time this spring, practicing for about two hours and giving the coaches to see how players react in game-like situations for the first time since spring practice started.

After the scrimmage, Shane Beamer said he liked what he saw for the most part.

“An important emphasis was playing clean football. We talk all the time about not beating ourselves and turning the ball over or having pre-snap penalties or having mental errors. For the most part I think that was good for a first scrimmage,” Beamer said.

“We didn’t have really any pre-snap penalties like false starts and offside. We were really good. We had the play clock going and wanted to make sure offensively we were moving efficiently in regards to getting the plays called, getting the offense in and out of the huddle. We had very, very minimal of those and a lot of that was probably more on us as coaches than it was the quarterbacks…I like where we’re heading right now.”

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The Gamecocks got all four quarterbacks—Luke Doty, Jason Brown, Colten Gauthier and Connor Jordan—reps with Doty handling the majority of first team looks.

Beamer liked things from a tempo and efficiency standpoint and said the both lines of scrimmage also looked good.

“I thought they operated at a high level. It was clean ball. I wanted to see us play physical, run the ball and stop the run. We showed flashes of being able to do both. I continue to be impressed by the defensive line in the first group with JJ and those guys with the way they can rush the passer,” he said.

“I really like what the first offense did today. We were working up multiple quarterbacks with our second offense and all those guys got some work with Jason, Connor and Colten. There were things from an efficiency standpoint with those guys moving through the scrimmage that we need to be better at, but for the most part they were good and the physicality was good.”

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With Top Golf set up at Williams-Brice, the Gamecocks had to practice on the practice field and not at the stadium, which didn’t allow the coaches to really communicate over headsets.

They were able to get some good goal line periods in with a couple of running backs and a freshman tight end picking up scores.

“I know Rashad Amos caught a ball along the sideline and scored a touchdown. We had a fumble and a fumble recovery. We had one interception. We had a goal line period where ZaQuandre White scored a touchdown. Jaheim Bell scored a touchdown in a goal line period,” Beamer said. “There weren’t enough touchdowns. We need more of those. We did have some good things happen out there.”