It obviously wasn't a fun trip to Knoxville for South Carolina over the weekend.

But if there was anything positive for the Gamecocks to take from that experience as they watched the film on Sunday and then began to prepare in earnest for Vanderbilt on Tuesday, it's that there were strong signs of life from the Carolina rushing attack.

The Gamecocks' running game, which had struggled all season to consistently get much going outside of the opener against Eastern Illinois, had its best game of the season against what was a solid Tennessee run defense coming into the game.

Removing the sacks from the equation, the Gamecocks rushed for 176 yards on the ground with a 4.8 per-carry average. Kevin Harris paced the running game with 61 yards and a touchdown.

“We’re going to need him and all those running backs to continue to get better as it goes on," Beamer said Tuesday during his weekly teleconference. "He had some really good runs on Saturday and got to continue to bring him along, continue to get this running game going. Our offensive line did some good things on Saturday and I thought they did a better job of sustaining blocks, finishing blocks down the field. And when you do that, your running game is going to get better and we’ve got to continue to do that.”

That aspect - sustaining blocks for longer - has been a point of emphasis for the Gamecocks' offensive line in practice as of late and it appears to be paying off.

Going into the second half of the season, Carolina will look to also continue to sustain some of the run-game success it saw Saturday. That seems possible when considering that the Gamecocks were able to have success with their base run plays, and not with the aid of smoke and mirrors like the week before when the successful running plays were largely on end arounds or swing passes that act as an extension of the run game.

While many have said the Gamecocks need to find an "identity" on that side of the ball, Beamer pushed back at those notion a bit.

"As far as identity, it’s not like each week we’re running a lot different plays," he said. "We’re doing a lot of the same stuff each and every week. It’s not like, oh, crap, this didn’t work against Troy. Let’s try this whole new run scheme.

Beamer identified inside zone, duo and outside zone as the team's base run plays while they've also mixed in some pin-and-pull and counter.

"Those are our base runs that we’re always going to hang our hat on, then a lot of the concepts we’re doing in the passing game are the same ones we throw week after week," he said. "A lot of the pass concepts we threw against Tennessee the other day are the same ones we threw against Eastern Illinois in Game 1."

While Beamer is quick to point out that it's not been the year so far that anyone wants, on offense or overall, Saturday's rushing performance could be one to build on moving forward.

"As the year goes on, we just want to be able to – more definitively – impose our will on people, in regards to running the football when we need to run it and throw it when we need to throw it,” Beamer said.

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