If there’s one play to illustrate what South Carolina is on defense this year, look no further than a third down late in the game against Auburn.

With the Gamecocks clinging to a four-point lead and the Tigers driving, TJ Finley caught the ball and two seconds later JJ Enagbare was baring down on him with Mo Kaba en route as well. Finley fired only to see the ball deflect off of Carlins Platel’s hand and bound to the ground.

It’s what South Carolina’s been this season—a mesh of both returners and newcomers and old and young—and it’s worked so far.

“We have a motto on defense: one shine, we all shine. That’s the mentality we all go out with. We’re all going out there trying to make play sat the same time,” Brad Johnson said. “If you watch film and watch the games, you see how happy we are for each other when we make plays. That’s the motto we try to have—one shine, we all shine—and we try to play that way.”

It was the perfect reflection of what this Gamecock team has been with a returning star in Enagbare pressuring the quarterback, a young returning linebacker on the blitz as well only to have the transfer portal senior ultimately make the play.

And it’s a testament to how the Gamecocks turned their defense on its head in one offense.

After a porous 2020 season where South Carolina gave up yards to just about everybody, the Gamecocks this year are allowing fewer than 24 points per game and rank in the middle of the pack in the SEC in yards per play against (5.5) and are fourth in yards per pass attempt at just 6.9 yards.

“It says a lot about who we are as a football team that coach Beamer’s put together. His mindset is cultivated throughout the team,” defensive coordinator Clayton White said. “It’s good to see those guys running around making football plays at home in a critical moment for the football team. We just want to keep it going."

They’ve done it with just about every way to get players on campus, using a wealth of returners on the defensive line and pieced things together with transfer portal players on the back end.

It’s a smorgasbord of backgrounds with additions from almost every level of college football—from FBS to Division II—and it’s worked for the most part.

“Frankly, I don’t know how many SEC schools would have recruited a defensive back from Assumption College as hard as we did,” Shane Beamer said. “It’s a testament to our recruiting department saying we’d be willing to go anywhere and everywhere to find guys and a testament to the coaches for coaching them up and a testament to those guys and what they’re about.”

Now the Gamecocks face what Beamer called a “big challenge” against Clemson’s talented group of receivers and tight ends in a Tiger offense rounding into form the last three weeks.

Clemson’s offensive strength is where South Carolina struggles defensively—the run game—and tackling and leveraging will be priority number one Saturday night.

“They do a great job of running and spitting the ball outside,” White said. “We have to be great in our alignments and leverage and understand they’ve been together a long time in that system so we have to be sharp on our adjustments.”

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