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Gamecocks benefiting from 'good on good' practice

Will Muschamp will have a better feel late Saturday night how much a recent change in practice structure has helped the Gamecocks improve, but so far, so good.

The Gamecocks used the bye week prior to the UMass game to get more "good versus good" work -- that's first team vs. first team rather than a scout team -- and that practice has continued over through the UMass week and into the Gamecocks preparation for Tennessee this week.

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"We were together probably more today than we have all season as far as eliminating scout reps and going strictly versus good on good work and fastball work, and that’s how you get better," Muschamp said. "It’s a developmental game and you’ve got to be able to do that, especially our youth. I made a mistake by not doing that earlier in the season."

While the scout team is typically required to reproduce the schematic looks that a team is going to face in that week's particular game -- especially for the defense, which faces a variety of offensive schemes throughout the course of a season -- it's difficult for a scout team to present the physical challenge that first team vs. first team provides.

Specifically, Muschamp hopes to improve a rushing offense (106.86 yards/game) that is last in the SEC and a rushing defense that is 10th (211.14 yards allowed/game) in conference.

"We challenged them on our physicality, stopping the run and ability to run the ball," Muschamp said last week during his UMass preview presser. "At the end of the day, it comes back to toughness and it has to be a culture and a DNA within your program so I changed some things up practice wise. We have done more good on good work than we have ever done, which we do a lot anyways, to be able to continue to look at fastball looks and play blocks and finish blocks on both sides of the ball."

Muschamp is making up for lost time this week by continuing the "fastball" work. The ability to do that is aided by the similarities in scheme between the Gamecocks and Volunteers on both offense and defense. That has allowed the Gamecocks first teams to continue to rep against each other, while still seeing many of the same concepts they'll see Saturday night, the looks which typically require a scout team to reproduce.

"That helps you," Muschamp says. "Really, its so important for you to expose looks for your players to prepare them mentally for the game, and in order to do that, you have to rep it. When you sit down and can have a common language talk about offense and defense about what they do and some of the things we do because there’s a lot of carryover schematically on both sides of the ball."

Has the change helped?

"I think so," Muschamp said. "We’ll see much more on how far we’ve come on Saturday night."

South Carolina and Tennessee kick off at 7:20 p.m. ET on the SEC Network.

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