Gator Bowl: Kai Kroeger's TD pass latest highlight for South Carolina's Beamer Ball

Shane Beamer had been waiting to make this call for a long, long time.

"We've been working since literally last year, and we finally got an opportunity to call it," the South Carolina coach said.

In South Carolina, they call it Beamer Ball. To ring out 2022, Beamer Ball gave America a front-row seat.

Wild and woolly, fast and furious, South Carolina's thrill-a-minute offense brought more than a half of highlights, and very nearly a victory, in Friday's record-setting 45-38 loss to Notre Dame at Friday's TaxSlayer Gator Bowl at TIAA Bank Field.

From a flea flicker to the latest version of special teams trickery from the best-passing punter in the land, South Carolina lit up the afternoon in the 78th edition of Jacksonville's college football tradition. Just how wild did it get?

• A touchdown pass from a punter to a long snapper.

• Three passers — quarterback Spencer Rattler, wide receiver D.K. Joyner and punter Kai Kroeger — on a single scoring drive. South Carolina attempted a play with a fourth potential passer, receiver Xavier Legette, but he slipped without delivering the planned option pass.

• Even on the more normal plays, the Gamecocks kept Notre Dame guessing, cycling through eight ball carriers and nine pass catchers on the night while turning up the tempo in the opening drives.

The key ingredient: the special teams highlights, once again.

"This was a game that we figured we were going to need to do something on special teams," Kroeger said.

More from the Gator Bowl:South Carolina coach Shane Beamer unhappy with blindside block penalty

What the numbers tell us:Team and individual stats from Notre Dame vs. South Carolina

Irish Classic: Notre Dame rallies from early deficit to stun South Carolina in TaxSlayer Gator Bowl

KROEGER, ROGERS CONNECT ON TD

Special teams unleashed its wildest of wild plays in the first quarter. Lining up for fourth and 8 on the Notre Dame 23, the Fighting Irish expected a field goal. South Carolina had other ideas.

By the time the play ended, the ball wasn't headed toward the uprights. Instead, it fluttered into the hands of long snapper-turned-receiver Hunter Rogers for a go-ahead score off Kroeger's pass.

"There was something we felt good about, and Kai's got some options off the play based on how they covered it," Beamer said.

For his career, dating back to 2020, Kroeger has completed 6 of 6 passes for 173 yards and three touchdowns — enough for a passer rating somewhere in the stratosphere.

And for a non-quarterback, Kroeger sounded an awful lot like a seasoned passer when describing his touchdown to Rogers, normally the long snapper split to the right of the formation.

"Hunter was actually probably the third read," he said. "So I was just seeing what the defense did. A bunch of people covered Tonka [Hemingway] and Mitch [Jeter] got double-teamed, and Hunter was the man free and I saw him running wide open."

LEGETTE CATCH A HIGHLIGHT

By those standards, South Carolina's key third-quarter third-down conversion — a shovel pass to Nate Adkins in the middle of the line after a clever fake by Rattler — was practically three yards and a cloud of dust.

But without that shovel pass, there's no first down, and no touchdown later on the drive on Legette's whirling, twisting, right-on-the-sideline catch from Spencer Rattler's 42-yard delivery. If not for Notre Dame's rally, that catch might have entered the books as the signature Gator Bowl moment in a 2022 game packed with thrills.

Officials closely reviewed the play, in which Legette seemed to transform into a human corkscrew while landing his foot almost right on the boundary. After weighing the decision, they let the touchdown stand.

The senior receiver himself had no doubts.

"I just had a feel for it, man," Legette said. "I knew I was in the end zone, and I always work on that foot drag."

RUNNING OUT OF STEAM

South Carolina needed Beamer Ball more than ever, on a lineup depleted by injuries and transfer exits.

But once the team ran out of steam, the Gamecocks hit the wall, hard, falling to 0-for-Jacksonville in its Gator Bowl history to join prior losses in 1946, 1980, 1984 and 1987.

The Gamecocks' injury list added Adkins, their last remaining tight end with significant experience and the team's second-leading pass catcher with five on the day, after an otherwise-unspecified upper body injury in the third period.

South Carolina's offense thumped into a solid roadblock after Legette's acrobatic touchdown, and Rattler's passes — he ended 29 of 46 for 246 yards but connected on only 7 of 18 after halftime — started to go awry. In the fourth quarter, the Gamecocks gained only 32 yards, and ended the night backed up into a fourth-and-36.

Even for Beamer Ball, that down and distance proved a little too much.

"We just didn't execute as well as we needed to," Beamer said.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: TaxSlayer Gator Bowl: Special teams score highlights Beamer Ball