The smile was hard to keep off JJ Enagbare’s face.

Talking about South Carolina’s admittedly vanilla defensive game plan, which was by design from the coaching staff, Enagbare took a chance talk to mention vanilla is not going to be the norm with Clayton White at the helm of the defense.

“Oh yeah the sky’s the limit. We can be very good on all three levels. Today we only put the basic stuff out there. Yeah this defense can get very jiggy man,” Enagbare said. “We can play free and have fun. I’m looking forward to this year with this defense.”

The Gamecocks had their annual spring game, capping off their 15 practices with a scrimmage and some situational work at Williams-Brice Sunday afternoon.

It was the first chance for fans to get a look at what this year’s South Carolina team will look like but it was a very pared-down game plan to make sure neither side of the ball was putting too much on film for the first few opponents.

“There’s a lot offensively and defensively we didn’t show today. Coach White was very vanilla with what we did defensively. Make sure we’re aware of that. It wasn’t like we were doing a lot defensively that was exotic, and the same thing offensively,” Shane Beamer said.

“We had a lot of plays at our disposal but we didn’t run a lot of different plays throughout the day. We mixed it up but it was pretty vanilla. Weren’t going to show everything we’re doing offensively and defensively.”

What was impressive for Beamer to see was the Gamecocks’ execution offensively.

While they weren’t busting out the halfback passes or unique formations, they did have a full game plan in for the spring game and worked on a few situational things like red zone, third down and short yardage plays.

Beamer said it wasn’t a “streamlined” game plan with just 10 plays for the offense to run, instead making it a little bit broader to showcase some of the Gamecocks’ base offensive concepts under coordinator Marcus Satterfield.

It wasn’t the most explosive wild offense yet—to be expected given what Beamer called a “vanilla” game plan—but what was pleasing was the teams’ ability to get a play in and execute without any real efficiency issues.

In the part of the scrimmage where official stats were kept, quarterbacks combined to go 9-for-16 for 104 yards (6.5 yards per attempt) with a touchdown and no interceptions.

“I was pleased with the efficiency we operated with offensively,” Beamer said. “Great job by Satt calling the play and the coaches on the sideline getting it in and out and the quarterbacks being able to execute. I think we had a very few (pre-snap penalties). I think one delay of game, maybe, in the red zone period and that was more me talking to them while the play clock was running. That was good to see the efficiency of being able to call plays and execute the offense.”

The Gamecocks also didn’t do any live special teams work, instead doing punt reps and then different drills between the first and second quarter.

That, Beamer said, was also by design.

“We didn’t do punt today as a full group,” Beamer said. “What Coach (Pete) Lembo did on the punt team at Memphis is different than what I did at Oklahoma and other places so we prefer not to show everything we’re doing on special teams for the whole world to see.”