You gotta have something to bank on when you try to talk smack...
As mentioned before, I am currently in law school in Columbia. The Southern Mississippi/SC game was in fact the first opportunity I have had to attend a game in Williams-Brice Stadium. I approached it more as a dry run for next weekend's game, scouting out our opponent for the Dawgs...
As a tailgating note, if I had to describe the tailgating scene around Columbia in one word, here's what I'd pick: Jacksonville. I did have a great time tailgating with some SC fraternity friends and associated coeds. But at the end of the day, Columbia is inundated with railroad tracks and warehouses, and Williams-Brice is surrounded by acres of asphalt. Michael Adams, be aware: while North Campus may occasionally get sullied, at least Sanford Stadium isn't located in the Crock-Pot of the South, surrounded by cotton warehouses, CSX tracks, and more warehouses. Hopefully we'll be able to fully reclaim North Campus under some sort of regulated, registered system within the next few seasons.
Also, I think this was the first time I had ever seen people watching a college baseball highlight reel at a football tailgate. If SC won anything beyond a baseball title (ie a SEC football Championship), I'm pretty sure that the entire city of Columbia would implode and the entire universe collapse on itself. Maybe even if they added a few 10-win seasons to their record book...
Strange resemblance to Alltel Stadium...
While the game, score-wise, appears lopsided for the Gamecocks, they ran a majority of the game out of the shotgun formation, with multiple receivers spread wide. Obviously SC did not want to give away any major new wrinkles to their playbook (or throw too many loops at Connor Shaw), but I feel like the one fundamental thing that they needed to do and perform against Southern Miss, they fell short. South Carolina needed to dominate at the line of scrimmage and run the ball; while they did rack up 237 rushing yards, they lost on time of possession to Southern Miss (28:57-31:03).
82 out of the 237 yards came from Florida-esque QB runs up the middle, and additionally 52 extra yards came on one scamper by an SC RB. If SC can't run the ball down the throats of a mediocre Conference USA opponent primarily through their running backs and control the time of possession, I would be a little worried if I was Spurrier.
Sure, the Connor Shaw and Stephen Garcia song and dance needed to split some snaps and spread it out, and we all know that Southern Mississippi was ranked #109 in pass defense last year. But with a new zone blocking line scheme in Columbia, a relatively inexperienced offensive line, and a new backfield rotation, the more live running reps for SC, the better. Ask Scott Lakatos what he knows about South Carolina's passing attack.
He knows that Bojangles is across the street...
I will say though that there is somewhat of a buzz starting to build in Columbia for the UGA game next Saturday.
While the UGA-SC game is still not sold out (go ahead and buy your ticket; Columbia is a short drive from GA), I had a die-hard SC student tell me that his rival list ranked as: 1) Tennessee 2) UGA 3) Osama Bin Laden 4) Clemson. Evidently IPTAY holding the lead in the overall series by 27 games ranks behind hunting international terrorists...
Get ready, it's college football season. Enjoy the ride.
