Gamecocks look to maintain late leads
Though South Carolina has suffered just one loss this season, coach Steve Spurrier said Saturday’s home contest against Kentucky will be a crucial turning point in the Gamecocks’ 2013 campaign.
“We’ve got some coaching to do if we’re going to turn around this season,” Spurrier said. “Because we’ve been on the verge of really blowing a couple of games.”
Those couple of games would be South Carolina’s last two outings, a 35-25 win over Vanderbilt and a 28-25 victory at UCF.
The Gamecocks (3-1, 1-1 SEC) had built a lead of 28 points against Vanderbilt and 18 points against, only to allow their opponents to claw their way into the game.
“We’ve got a lot of improving to do trying to hold leads,” Spurrier said. “We’re very, very fortunate to have won the last two ball games. We’re very fortunate that we’re not sitting here in the dumps, because we could’ve lost the last two ball games.”
Though Kentucky is just 1-3 on the season, recent history suggests South Carolina should not look past the Wildcats.
Last season’s matchup in Lexington, Ky., also saw Kentucky enter the game with a 1-3 record, only to take a 17-7 lead over South Carolina into the locker room at halftime.
The Gamecocks managed to outscore Kentucky 31-0 in the second half to earn a 38-17 win, but an inconsistent showing against this year’s Kentucky team would fall right in line with the trend South Carolina has established this season.
The similarly unpredictable play of last year’s game against the Wildcats and South Carolina’s most recent game against Central Florida was not lost on Spurrier.
“It was very similar to the Kentucky game, almost exactly like the Kentucky game,” Spurrier said. “We had to try something different.”
South Carolina sits at 3-1 with a 1-1 conference record going into the game against the Wildcats and has not won a game by more than 10 points since beating North Carolina 27-10 in the season opener. Despite the at times unconvincing fashion in which the team has won games, South Carolina sits at No. 13 nationally — a number that Spurrier is thankful for.
“We’re 3-1 and 13 in the country, which is flattering for the way we’ve played at times,” Spurrier said. “But on the other side, we’ve played pretty well at times.”
By now, most Gamecock fans are aware of widespread youth on the South Carolina roster. With just four scholarship seniors, South Carolina is the youngest team in division I football, Spurrier said.
This inexperience can explain much of South Carolina’s inconsistent play, but senior defensive end Chaz Sutton thinks that his younger counterparts can grow as the season goes on.
“It’s just all about just being focused,” Sutton said. “We try to talk to these guys to just focus in each week, because it’s always a new team, and it’s always a new scheme that we’ve got to just get prepared for.”
Spurrier said that faulty tackling and dropped passes on the part of inexperienced players has prompted the team to go back to the fundamentals in practice this week in the hopes of eliminating minor mistakes.
As Spurrier prepares South Carolina for its third SEC clash of the season, he is choosing to look at the ugly fashion in which his team has won games with the glass half full. Spurrier said that he was proud of his young team, and its ability to grind out close games early in the season bodes well for the Gamecocks.
“They’ve done pretty well,” Spurrier said. “Yeah we’ve had some lapses. We’ve almost blown some leads the last couple of weeks. But to be 3-1, it’s not bad, and hopefully we can learn from these mistakes and get better.”