Five things to watch Saturday against Missouri
SOUTH CAROLINA GAMECOCKS FOOTBALL
For the first real time this season, it's time to hit the road.
The Gamecocks have their first true away game Saturday against Missouri, in what looks like—at least on paper—a must win for Will Muschamp and his team early in the season. A win puts the Gamecocks at .500 with the chance to get to three wins before the bye week but a loss dents postseason chances quite dramatically.
There's a lot going on with this game, but GamecockCentral gives you five things to look for as the Gamecocks start their SEC slate.
Road warrior Hilinski
Yes, this is a storyline every week, but until Ryan Hilinski gets through the first few games of his career, he's going to be the biggest storyline on this team.
He's played two teams on completely opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of talent level in Charleston Southern and Alabama with this week's opponent probably more on par with South Carolina from a talent and program perspective.
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While it's not Athens or Gainesville, Missouri can be a somewhat tough place to play on the road and it'll be interesting to see how he does when he can't feed off crowd noise like he can at home.
The game plan isn't made public—for good reason—but the Gamecocks have shown they're not afraid to let the freshman sling it; we'll see if that fearlessness offensively gets on the plane with the team to Missouri.
Can the run game continue it's revamping?
Speaking of letting the young guy sling it, a way the Gamecocks can open up some throwing lanes for him is to let Rico Dowdle continue this scorched-earth path he's been on his senior year.
The guy is running like a man pissed off, and it shows in his stat line. He's top five in the SEC in rushing yards per game (83.7) and rattling off 7.6 yards a clip.
It helps the Gamecocks figured out their offensive line after week one, but Dowdle's looked like the guy the coaches thought he was as a freshman.
It'll be imperative to run the ball and take some pressure off Hilinski going against Missouri's pass defense, which is best in the SEC.
Secondary centerstage
So, last week wasn't great for the Gamecocks' secondary. Fans could see it, Will Muschamp said it and the players owned it in their weekly media availability Tuesday.
Jaycee Horn put the loss squarely on the defensive backs' shoulders, saying they didn't have their eyes in the right place and didn't tackle well.
Solving the issue is a little harder since the Gamecocks are decently thin on the back end. They could opt for a new look out there, potentially moving RJ Roderick to safety and Jammie Robinson back to nickel, or could stick with the same five hoping their games continue to develop after another week of practice.
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Regardless of what they do, all eyes defensively will be on the back end.
Stopping the run
Look, the Gamecocks weren't a great run defense last year but this year the front seven's actually played pretty well lately. They held Alabama to less than 100 yards rushing last week and Javon Kinlaw looks like a first-round talent through three games with an SEC-best three sacks.
Missouri, though, has a top five rushing attack in the SEC led by Larry Roundtree who's averaging 95.7 yards per game and 5.7 carries this year with four touchdowns. The Tigers love playing off the run, so how the Gamecocks defend that to try and force Missouri into a one-dimensional game will be interesting to watch.
Red zone execution
South Carolina spent the better portion of the preseason talking about being better in the red zone, settling goals of points 100 percent of the time inside the 20 with 70 percent of the trips ending in a touchdown.
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Through the first two weeks, they actually did pretty good hitting those goals but scuffled against Alabama. The Tide does it to a lot of people, but the Gamecocks had three trips to the red zone and mustered just 10 points and left empty handed once after a not-well-executed trip inside the 'Bama five-yard line.
Right now they're at 64 percent of red zone trips ending in touchdowns, which is below the goal of 70, and Muschamp will probably the first to say they need to execute better down there.
It'll be fun to see what Bryan McClendon cooks up for the Gamecocks this week in the red area and how well they execute. It could potential decide the game.
