South Carolina (4-3, 2-3 SEC) returns to Williams-Brice Stadium for the first time in a month on Saturday, searching for its first ranked win of the year.
The Gamecocks will face off against No. 10 Texas A&M (7-1, 5-0 SEC). Kickoff will be at 7:30 p.m. ET and the game will air on ABC.
Those are some facts. Here are some thoughts.
Some want to flip this. They want to say, “If South Carolina’s offense can just do X, Y and Z, the Gamecocks will win.”
Let’s scrap that. It’s November — we basically know what the Gamecocks’ offense is going to provide: 350-ish yards, one or two touchdowns, some stalled drives and probably some turnovers. Who says the offense hasn’t been consistent?
So focus on the defense. This game is on them. How many turnovers can they force? How many points can they score? How many sacks can Kyle Kennard and Dylan Stewart combine for? How many times can they make Texas A&M punt from its own end zone?
This is a defensive group — still, sadly, lacking a nickname — that struts around with this we-run-the-world confidence. Their motto is PTBD — put the ball down — and it might also translate to: We’re not going to get pissed when our offense fumbles or continuously puts us in terrible spots. We’ll fix things.
Maybe that’s their nickname: The Fixers.
I digress. But this defensive unit has long declared itself historic, which it might be if the sack numbers stay on pace. Historic, though, comes with the requirement that it can overcome anything. Bad offense. Bad field position. Bad calls. Anything.
Two weeks after carrying the Gamecocks to a win over Oklahoma, the defense might be on the hook to do the same Saturday.
Texas A&M has a bit of a quarterback conundrum. Trailing in the second half last week against LSU, Aggies coach Mike Elko pulled starter Conner Weigman for true freshman Marcel Reed — and then Reed scored on four straight possessions to win the game.
Unsurprisingly, Elko isn’t divulging his starting quarterback.
But it seems hard to imagine he could watch what Reed did last week — 70 passing yards, 62 rushing yards — and dump a bucket of water on the hot hand.
So let’s say Reed, the 6-foot-2, 180-pound dual-threat quarterback, starts for the Aggies. Is that worse for South Carolina? Would that limit the Gamecocks’ edge rushers? Think about it — it’s hard to get sacks when you’re keeping the edge and containing a rushing quarterback.
“We go against it every single day with LaNorris (Sellers) and Robby (Ashford),” said defensive coordinator Clayton White. “So we understand how to rush those guys but, obviously, we’ve got to make sure we do that in the game.”
Saturday is homecoming at Williams-Brice Stadium and, as they have every homecoming week for years, former South Carolina football players will gather at a tailgate and hang out chatting for hours.
Among the group will be a number of guys from the 1984 “Black Magic” team. This is the 40th anniversary of that Gamecocks squad, which went 10-2, reached No. 2 in the polls and still captivates USC fans..
Yet their celebration will be among themselves. Per a South Carolina representative, aside from a documentary on Gamecocks Plus to be released this winter, the school has no plans to honor the team this year. No reunion. No dinner. No halftime recognition.
“That’s kind of really disappointing,” said Carl Hill, a linebacker on the ‘84 squad. ”Last year, I started talking to the athletic department about it and this year I mentioned again. … It’s a shame they’re not going to do anything.”
A number of other Black Magic alums The State spoke with expressed similar frustration. When asked how South Carolina decides what teams to honor, the USC rep said it’s usually “big anniversaries,” like the 25th, 50th or maybe — as it did last year with the Spurrier teams — the 10th.
The 1984 team was last honored for the 25th anniversary in 2009, bringing it out to the field with the 1969 ACC championship team, which was celebrating its 40th anniversary.
Reunions and celebrations might be forgotten with the craziness of college athletics right now. But this is a school without some treasure trove of achievements. It has not won a conference title in 55 years. It has won 10 games just four times. South Carolina could honor the Black Magic team every five years and that still might not be enough.
Walk into any long-standing bar in Columbia. No doubt there’s a relic on the wall from the 1984 season. I’d guess the same is true for the houses of many Gamecock die-hards. That team still resonates.
South Carolina’s offense has not been good this season. Loggains, the USC offensive coordinator, will be the first to point that out.
Actually, nope, fans will be the first to point that out. As is the case for any struggling OC, Loggains has become the social media punching bag.
This is a situation where two things can be true. One, there are plenty of questionable calls, schemes, formations Loggains has used. And, two, he is not an idiot.
This week, I was curious why Sellers didn’t do more bootlegs. Why didn’t he just take the snap and immediately run right, so he could evade pressure and cut the field in half? The Gamecocks sort of do that when they run a triple option, but the lack of bootlegs made little sense to me.
Loggains, though, had an answer.
“You’ve got to make them defend 53 and 1/3 (yards) as well,” Loggains said. “Last year, we moved the pocket a bit more with (Spencer Rattler) because he threw so well on the run. You have to find different ways to do that, whether it’s perimeter throws, whether it’s triple options, whether it’s zone reads.
“Because we do get more nine technique (pass rushers playing very wide), we do get more zone read,” he continued. “So you’re getting more mesh charges, where the defense ends are rushing the quarterback. So (bootlegs) and naked (bootlegs) and all those things aren’t as advantageous.”
Let’s get ahead of this. If South Carolina upsets the Aggies on Saturday, no doubt a flood of students — as it should — will hop the hedges and storm the field.
So how much would South Carolina have to pay?
Because the SEC updated its competition area policy in 2023, thus resetting it, everything before that doesn’t count. The new policy dictates a school will be fined $100,000 for its first violation, $250,000 for its second and $500,000 for every field or court storming thereafter.
But South Carolina did get fined in January after fans at Colonial Life Arena stormed the court following the men’s basketball team knocking off Kentucky. That means a Gamecocks win Saturday could cost the school a quarter-million dollars.
