20th ranked South Carolina takes to the SEC road for one final time this season as the Gamecocks head out to Arkansas for a 7:45 Eastern Time kickoff at Donald W. Reynolds Stadium. USC is 2-1 in road games this season, all in the SEC, with a loss at Alabama and wins at Florida and Oklahoma.

The Gamecocks have won four straight games and are 6-3 overall and 4-3 in the SEC. The Razorbacks, coming off a close loss at Auburn last weekend, are 3-6 and 1-5.

The Gamecocks and Razorbacks entered the SEC together in 1992 and were “permanent opponents” through the 2013 season. This will be their 25th meeting, but their first since 2022, a 44-30 win by Arkansas in Fayetteville. Current Gamecock offensive coordinator Kendal Briles was the OC for the Razorbacks at that time. The Gamecocks won the previous meeting in Columbia in 2017 48-22.

Arkansas has not been good on offense to this point of the season. The Razorbacks are averaging just 20 points per game, last in the SEC. Quarterback KJ Jackson ranks 11th in the league at 206 passing yards per game. However, receiver Chris Marshall is dangerous. He’s third in the league at 87 receiving yards per game.

Defensively, the Razorbacks are giving up 372 yards and 27 points per game.

Some of Beamer’s Key Comments

• Big challenge coming up, needs to be better than they were last week, Arkansas is getting better by the game, had Auburn on the ropes last week, played Tennessee very close, they play hard and present problems in all three phases.
• Nothing has changed on Sellers since Sunday night, injury report will come out Wednesday night.
• Points are most important thing but gave up too many rushing yards, were on the field for too many plays, were really good in red zone, A&M helped with some penalties in red zone, and crowd helped.
• Wants to be a team that gets better as game goes on, wants to be better in the fourth quarter, defense has been really good in second half of games getting stops and keeping teams out of the end zone.
• Not going to win a lot of games down the stretch rushing for 100 yards, got to be better with that moving forward.
• Embarrassed that they only had 10 players on the field on defense on final drive, that can not happen, embarrassing for him as a head coach that that happened and it shouldn’t happen with all the people they have on the defensive staff, but it starts with him.
• Arkansas has some outstanding defensive linemen, this will be a challenge for his offensive line, but his guys are playing with great technique and winning one on ones.
• Got to be an idiot and head buried in the sand if you don’t realize you can get beat any Saturday, and they are about to play a good SEC team at night on the road. what’s real is turn on the tape and you’ll see the challenge.
• Told his team this morning that if they only rush for 100 yards and give up 200 rushing yards to an Arkansas team that rushed for over 200 yards last week, they will get beat.
• The Sellers TD run was basically the same play they ran against A&M in 2024 for a TD pass to Simon, Bennett was in the flat if Sellers wanted to drop it off to him, but saw the open grass and took off.
• Makes him sad that they are ending the SEC Championship Game due to the expanded playoffs, said there’s nothing like that game.
• September was a really hard three-week stretch, probably the hardest of his career at USC, felt like he was letting people down, focus was on what he could do to get things turned around.
• Met with Clayton White right after the game about the 10 men on the field deal and he owned it, and then met again with defensive staff about it on Sunday, there are a lot more personnel groupings and communication wasn’t great, got to be cleaner.

Shane Beamer Previews the Arkansas Game