FNAN: UMass prepares for Williams-Brice noise, three Gamecock quarterbacks
As always, Williams-Brice Stadium should be loud on Saturday afternoon when the Gamecocks face Massachusetts in a non-conference matchup between two teams that have won a combined three games.
UMass is now past the halfway point of its first year as a FBS independent, dropping out of the Mid-American Conference following the 2015 season. Saturday marks their third road contest of the season, second at a SEC school.
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The Minutemen opened the 2016 season at Florida, trailing by just three points (10-7) early in the fourth quarter before the Gators scored a pair of touchdowns for a 24-7 win.
UMass finishes the season with consecutive road games at Troy, BYU and Hawaii.
Over the past five years, UMass has truly been one of the Road Warrior teams in FBS, willing to go anywhere and everywhere for a game and a paycheck.
Since the beginning of the 2012 season, the Minutemen have played in some of the largest stadiums in the country at a virtual Who’s Who of FBS programs – Florida, Notre Dame, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin, Colorado, Vanderbilt and Kansas State.
So, the Minutemen’s veteran players should be familiar with playing in front of a lot of fans.
Saturday will likely mark UMass quarterback Andrew Ford’s first career road start. Sophomore Ross Comis started earlier road games at Florida and Old Dominion.
“I don’t think it’s just any other game when you are playing in front of 80 or 90 thousand (fans). It’s different than here,” UMass coach Mark Whipple said after Tuesday’s practice. “On offense you have to deal with some silent counts and some elements, and Andrew [Ford] hasn’t done that.”
Ford experienced some of the big-time college football life when he redshirted at Virginia Tech in 2014 before transferring to a junior college. Still, he hasn’t started in front of a sizeable hostile crowd in his career. Since Comis dealt with the large crowd at the Swamp, Ford has sought him out for advice.
“It’s one of those powerhouse traditional schools and it’s going to be a really neat experience come Saturday,” Ford said after Tuesday’s practice. “I have a lot of friends from back home that play at South Carolina and go to school there, so it will be a neat atmosphere. We’re looking forward to it. Ross has been giving me lots of advice on how to handle it. He did great with it at Florida.”
Aside from having to deal with the noise, UMass must also enter Saturday’s game not knowing who will start at quarterback for the Gamecocks. As a result, the Minutemen have spent the week preparing for three quarterbacks – Perry Orth, Brandon McIlwain and Jake Bentley.
The loud buzz in Columbia is Bentley will make his Gamecock debut on Saturday. But UMass must prepare for anything and everything.
“It’s really three different kind of guys,” Whipple said. “I don’t know how much they’ll change the game plan. We won’t know until the game, but I will say their game plan is probably similar with Bentley and Orth, but with McIlwain they do a little bit more of the read-[option] type of things, so we have to prepare for it all. Mississippi State had their couple of guys. That’s just kind of the way it is in college football. They probably have three good ones. They’re in the SEC.”
Regardless of the outcome of Saturday’s noon game, UMass stands to make a ton of money. How much dough is UMass making this season with all these long road trips? A lot. The Minutemen have already pocketed $1.2 million from Florida, are ready to collect a cool $1.5 million from the Gamecocks for Saturday’s game and pocket a combined $650,000 for the season-ending trips to BYU and Hawaii.
Doing the math, that’s $3.35 million for four road games.
WEATHER FORECAST: Perfect southern football weather for late October. Sunny skies and temperatures in the low 60’s are expected for kickoff. Temperatures will rise into the mid 60’s as the game progresses. A zero percent chance of rain will continue throughout the game.
NOTES:
-- ESPN.com Viewer’s Guide to USC-UMass game: “No one was expecting Will Muschamp to beat the Texas A&Ms and Georgias of the world his first year at South Carolina. The roster Steve Spurrier left behind just wasn’t capable of hanging with most of the SEC. But games like this weekend against UMass are important because they are the games Muschamp and his staff are supposed to win. Doing so keeps the wolves at bay, giving the time needed to rebuild. We might even see some of that rebuilding up close and personal on Saturday if Muschamp pulls the trigger and brings true freshman quarterback Jake Bentley off the bench.”
-- CollegeFootballNews.com predicts a 27-17 Gamecock victory on Saturday: “The Minutemen might be 1-6, but they gave Mississippi State all it could handle, and it did a great job against the Florida offense to start the season. The defense, though, has been getting hammered on lately, and the offense isn’t good enough to keep up the pace. South Carolina is dead last in the nation in scoring offense, but for the first time all year it’ll score more than 20 points with the running game finally starting to work against a porous UMass defensive front. The Gamecocks will need to fight for a full four quarters, but they’ll stop their slide with a workmanlike and conservative effort.”
-- Eight Gamecocks have started each of the first six games this season: Offensive linemen Zack Bailey, Cory Helms and Mason Zandi, TE Hayden Hurst, DE Marquavius Lewis, BUCK LB Darius English, DT Taylor Stallworth and CB Chris Lammons.
-- Hurst has a team-leading 30 receptions. His consistency has been remarkable through the first six games. He has at least five receptions in four games and 80+ receiving yards in three games. Hurst ranks 6th in the SEC in receptions per game (5.0) and 8th in receiving yards per game (64.7). Gamecock tight ends have caught 51 passes, wide receivers have 44 and running backs 20.
-- How young is USC’s wide receiver corps? 78 of the 115 pass receptions have been by freshmen (67.8 percent). With 20 receptions, true freshman Bryan Edwards has as many career catches as any other wide receiver on the Gamecocks. Deebo Samuel has also caught 20 passes in his career (12 in 2015, 8 in 2016).
-- Redshirt freshman A.J. Turner is tied for fourth in the country among freshman with 112.0 all-purpose yards per game. Turner leads the Gamecocks in rushing with 300 yards on 68 carries. Freshmen have accounted for 87.0 percent of USC’s rushing yards (482 of 554) this season.
SEC WEEK 8 SCHEDULE (Sat. Oct. 22)
UMass at South Carolina, noon (SEC Network)
Texas A&M at Alabama, 3:30 p.m. (CBS)
Middle Tennessee at Missouri, 4 p.m. (SEC Network)
Arkansas at Auburn, 6 p.m. (ESPN)
Tennessee State at Vanderbilt, 7:30 p.m. (ESPNU)
Mississippi State at Kentucky, 7:30 p.m. (SEC Network)
Ole Miss at LSU, 9 p.m. (ESPN)
Byes: Florida (5-1), Georgia (4-3), Tennessee (5-2).
