South Carolina’s run game has spent the first half of the season largely trying to figure out its running game with little to no success.

The Gamecocks, after a few weeks of maddeningly inconsistently play up front and at running back, turned in their best performance on the ground since week one.

Now the biggest question is if the offense will be able to keep it going the final six games of the year.

“Each week is different schematically but certainly from the mindset of we did some good things in the run game yesterday,” Shane Beamer said. “There’s still a lot of things to clean up from the run game yesterday but we moved the ball at times and had some explosive runs and did some good things.”

Also see: Recapping Beamer's Sunday teleconference

Not accounting for sack yards, the Gamecocks rushed for 176 yards, averaging 4.8 yards per carry, the most against a FBS team this season and rushing for their first touchdown since Eastern Illinois as well.

Kevin Harris ended with a season high 61 yards and Juju McDowell averaged 5.1 yards per carry.

It resulted in one of the more explosive rushing performances of the season: three rushes of at least 12 yards for 58 yards.

“I certainly think you can build off that from a confidence standpoint and these were some of the schemes that were successful,” Beamer said. “We need to continue to do that.”

Also see: Grading the Gamecocks after Tennessee

South Carolina did more trying to run attacking the edges of Tennessee’s defense with 15 of their 35 carries coming either off tackle or on the end.

They tried to deviate some from the inside zone heavy tactics permeating the first few weeks and change things up some. The Gamecocks ran a handful of power runs, including one of Harris’s two touchdowns, and seemingly incorporated the fullback more against the Vols.

Both Jaheim Bell and Trai Jones, a reserve offensive lineman took snaps there.

“Somebody mentioned to Satt or (Greg) Adkins last week Trai had done some of it in the past before Carolina,” Beamer said. “He’s a good athlete and runs well. You have to have a guy out there who has some athleticism. He does,” “

It’s been tough sledding for the Gamecocks in the run game, which was expected to be a strength of this team, to start the year and the run game certainly looked better against the Vols.

There’s still plenty to work on, consistency being No. 1, with 24 percent of the runs going for no gain or negative yards and 38 percent going for two or fewer yards.

Also see: Instant analysis from Saturday's loss

“We really preached to our guys to be better straining and finishing blocks, finishing plays this week on offense, defense and special teams. I think you saw that,” Beamer said.

“We played really hard yesterday, really hard. It wasn’t always pretty. Play hard and strain, and I think you saw that particularly in the run game and on that drive. We have to continue to do finish.”

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