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South Carolina football played its first scrimmage of fall camp on Saturday afternoon at Williams-Brice Stadium. The scrimmage consisted of about 80 plays, which Shane Beamer confirmed afterwards was the target number.

"I like the group," Beamer said. "Similarto what I've told you guys before, it's a hard-working group. To be on practice number eight today, I know we're a tough team and we play hard, play physical. We've just got to get a lot of the other stuff cleaned up."

The Gamecocks will scrimmage againn next Saturday, a date which will put them within two weeks of the season opener against North Carolina in Charlotte.

A host of players did not participate in the scrimmage, although Beamer said he expected nearly all of them to be back before next Saturday's scrimmage. Defensive end Terrell Dawkins, linebacker Pup Howard, tight ends Trey Knox and Reid Mikeska, wide receivers Antwane Wells Jr. and Kelton Henderson, defensive back David Spaulding and offensive tackle Cason Henry all missed the scrimmage.

Mikeska will not be ready next week be ready next week, with the true freshman tight end fighting a lower body injury and "maybe be a few more weeks."

The big question coming into the scrimmage on the injury front was Wells, the team's leading receiver from 2022 who was not at the open portion of Friday's practice.

"He won't be back next week," Beamer said. "But we're optimistic he'll be ready for game one knowing how Juice attacks things. He's got a little bit of a lower body injury, nothing long term, just some things he needs to get a hold of. He assures me he is playing game one and knowing him,he will. Other than that, everyone should be back next week except Reid Mikeska."

Although Beamer was optimistic about the overall direction of the team coming out of the scrimmage, he did take one major issue with the scrimmage.

Penalties.

In one instance he said Mario Anderson Jr. had a big run wiped away by a holding penalty, something that was too present of a theme all afternoon.

"Just way too many penalties that negated explosive plays offensively or holding penalties in the secondary on defense that extended drives as well," Beamer said. "We pride ourselves on playing smart football. In year one here in 2021 we were one of the fewest penalized teams in this league, last year we were one of the most. We've got to get that cleaned up. We had too many of those today that we didn't need."

At his opening media day of fall camp, Beamer said one of the most important challenges over the following month would be figuring out now only his team's top five offensive linemen with starting left tackle Jaylen Nichols out, but also how the depth positions beyond the top five will stack up.

Now through eight practices and one scrimmage, he updated the process of narrowing down the best five up front.

"That was a goal of today was to have a better idea of who those guys are," Beamer said. "I think we're closer. We're mixing in a lot of people. I'm eager to get back over to the facility tonight to watch this scrimmage tape and see how that offensive line performed. Who is our starting five right now, I couldn't tell you who that is definitively who it is. But I really like our freshmen offensive line group. Those guys are going to play for us, a handful of them. Now we need to just figure out who those top seven, eight guys are going into game one."

The most hyped up member of this year's freshman class is unqestionably wide receiver Nyckoles Harbor, the highest-rated recruit of the Beamer era to date. Harbor has not taken any 11-on-11 reps during the open practice periods of camp so far, but Beamer offered a window into how he fared in his first eight practices and Saturday's scrimmage.

"I thought Nyck did some good things," Beamer said. "We got him out there, and he operated efficeintly. I noticed him when we did what we call punt pressurem the unit that goes up against our punt team, I noticed him on that. A guy with his speed and size, you'd think be pretty good at being able to block punts and spring returns for the punt returner. He did some good stuff on that. He's a tough kid. You worry about some of these track kids sometimes on if they just want to run fast and shy away from contact, but not that guy. He is tough, and he is physical."

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