This weekend was an eye opening one for Brady Allen.

Playing against the No. 1 team in the country and potentially the best offense nationally, the Gamecocks got a look at what Allen considers a great team, and it showed South Carolina exactly where some of its pitfalls lie.

“That’s why we’re not necessarily a great team yet. We’re very inconsistent. As we’ve seen in the past, when we do hit that’s how dangerous we can be. I don’t think we’ve shown our full potential,” Allen said.

“We’re really going to have to get a plan together and find out who we are as hitters and stick to that and don’t do anything we’re not there to do.”

The Gamecocks hit .146/.252/.213 over the course of the series, hitting just one home run and seeing its batting average in league play slipping under .230 with no player hitting over .300.

An offense predicated by power had just four extra-base hits this weekend and struck out 29 times to nine walks.

“I really think it’s going up there with a plan. A lot of us are going up there and seeing the pitch and reacting to it instead of sitting fastball and hitting fastball. We might be sitting on a slider and a fastball comes and we swing and don’t get our best swing on it,” Allen said.

“Once we start doing that and get a plan going I think this team will be very dangerous. Our pitching has done outstanding but we haven’t really given them any help.”

The Gamecock offense wasn’t held down the entire weekend, catching fire late in game one of a Friday doubleheader and exploding for six runs on eight hits the final three innings of game one.

The three-inning outburst accounted for eight of the Gamecocks’ 13 hits on the weekend and six of the team’s eight runs.

Now the next step is finding ways to score when the offense isn’t clicking against good pitching.

“We’re a very momentum based offense. We can really come at you in waves. We need to do a better job when we’re not getting quite as many hits, like obviously tonight we only had the two hits,” Mark Kingston said.

“We need to get some guys going and hitting the way they’re supposed to be hitting cause we have some guys who aren’t doing that right now. That’s our job to work with them and help them find whatever the key is for the light to go on and be operating at full potential.”

What they saw in the other dugout was a potent Arkansas lineup shutdown for the most part against good South Carolina pitching—the Razorbacks hit just .196/.320/.343—but took advantage of pitching mistakes.

That’s what Allen wants the Gamecock offense to be as they enter the final four series of SEC play.

“The step that’s eye opening to me is they lead the SEC in walks or are definitely up there. They’re seeing a lot of pitches at the plate and if they’re not seeing a lot of pitches at the plate they’re hitting a home run or a ball off the wall or a double,” Allen said. “They’re fouling a lot of balls off with two strikes and battling. They have that plan, you can tell.”