With rushing attack that was so good last year, it was only a matter of time for South Carolina.

The Gamecocks, which struggled on the ground almost all season against FBS teams, managed to put together a arguably their best performance of the season against a Florida defense giving up an average of 145 rushing yards per game against opponents.

ZaQuandre White, MarShawn Lloyd and Kevin Harris all averaged over six yards per carry against a stellar Florida run defense that had only allowed over 200 rushing yards once this season.

""For us to run the ball for 284, what a night. We controlled the line of scrimmage, that's where it started," Shane Beamer said. "I mean that's unbelievable because that's a good defense. I know they've had some issues in a couple games with running the football but it's also the same defense that held Georgia to basically three points throughout pretty much the entire first half last week."

It was the most yards on the ground this season and just the second time they've eclipsed 200 with the only other time the opener against Eastern Illinois.

Harris looked like the 2020 version of himself, running the ball for 128 yards and averaging eight yards a carry, both of which were season highs.

White had another good performance finishing with 111 rushing yards, his most since Eastern Illinois.

South Carolina vastly improved on their stats from the last game against Texas A&M when they ran for only 71 yards, their second worst of the season. As for what the team did differently, Beamer said it ultimately boiled down to playing better.

"I think we did some good things schematically," Beamer said. "Really it just gets down to trying to be more physical up front and being the most physical group on the field. Our offensive line moved people and came off the line with great physicality and our running backs ran the ball hard with great physicality."

With the run game opening up, the Gamecocks were able to have really their first all around performance of the season, putting up a season-best 40 points and the most scored at home against an FBS opponent since 2018.

The run game helped slow down the Florida pass rush, giving Jason Brown time in the pocket to open up the passing game.

"Certainly any time when you're able to run the ball for 284 yards thats going to make it easy because it's going to open up more and more things in the passing game off of play action," Beamer said.

Brown, who finished the game with 175 passing yards, said that the running game helped him out in his first SEC start.

"We've always been able to run the ball, we really just worked on winning our one-on-one battles upfront and on the perimeter this week," Brown said. "We just had to tighten up some things here and there and we did that."

After the game Beamer gave credit to the running backs and the offense as a whole for how they played but continued to say that there is still work to be done.

The Gamecocks (5-4, 2-4 SEC) are now on the precipice of bowl eligibility with three games to play and the goal now should be to prove this kind of performance isn't a one-off.

"We haven't arrived," Beamer said. "The key for us is going to be to continue to get better and be better against Missouri next week than what we were tonight."

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