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JD PicKell: Returning starters make South Carolina's defense formidable

Stephen Samraby: Steve Samra07/25/22SamraSource

South Carolina made waves throughout the offseason with their additions, but the talent that was already in the building is helping J.D. PicKell of On3 get excited for Shane Beamer to lead the team into battle.

On a recent episode of The Hard Count, PicKell made the claim that the sheer amount of returning starters for the Gamecocks will help their defense become a formidable hurdle for their opponents to overcome during the 2022 season.

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“On defense, you bring back seven starters,” began PicKell. “Zacch Pickens, defensive tackle. A guy they’re really excited about. They’re going to look to him to do a lot on the interior of that defensive line. Obviously, be a leader on that defense, all that.”

Pickens, a former five-star recruit per the On3 Consensus from the Class of 2019, is ready to breakout in a big way for the Gamecocks. In Beamer’s first season with the program, the hulking defensive lineman had his best season yet — amassing 38 total tackles and four sacks in 2022.

Moving forward, Zacch Pickens represents a reason to be giddy about the Gamecocks, among others. While PicKell is excited to see South Carolina in action, he’s far from the only one — the optimism is through the roof for the 2022 season.

South Carolina fans are cautiously optimistic about 2022 season

Last season was the first for South Carolina under new head football coach Shane Beamer, and now the Gamecocks are looking to build off of that in 2022. But while expectations continue to rise for Beamer, fans aren’t getting too far ahead of themselves just yet.

In a recent episode of The Hard Count, On3’s J.D. PicKell revealed that he recently visited On3’s South Carolina site, where fans admitted that they are cautiously optimistic entering the 2022 campaign.

“From a fan base perspective, take the pulse there is cautiously optimistic,” PicKell said. “Went over to our On3 site with South Carolina – Gamecock Central – go check it out if you haven’t. Dropped a question on the board, said, ‘What’s the pulse?’ and we got probably two pages worth of folks saying in different ways cautiously optimistic. The pieces are there, we saw good things a season ago.”