The past week has not been a good one for South Carolina football.

After Will Muschamp was relieved of his head coaching duties last Sunday, four players opted out of the rest of the season, and Friday saw former players arguing with each other and with fans on social media.

But Saturday offered a chance for the players to try and put all of those distractions aside and get back to playing football, albeit with some of those emotions still lingering.

“Coach Muschamp means a lot to me. First of all, he took me, this south Georgia boy that really didn’t know what he was gonna do but he took a chance on me and I’m so thankful for him and I’ll keep telling him this. Without him, I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be able to sit in front of you guys, and wouldn’t be able to be at this point,” linebacker Ernest Jones said.

“What he’s done for us, me, and this team it’s been very tremendous and we greatly appreciate him, we love him. It sucks for us though that we couldn’t play better so he could’ve stayed.”

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Muschamp saw his time at South Carolina end, getting fired after a loss to Ole Miss.

In his players' minds, it was an abrupt end to their head coach's tenure and somewhat of a gut punch to a lot of guys on the team.

Redshirt Senior Sadarius Hutcherson spent his entire college career up until tonight playing for Will Muschamp and admitted it was really hard to see him get fired but college football is a "business" and it was his job to lace up and get ready to play.

“To see him go, with me starting as a freshman and up to now, having him to see me develop as a person and a player, it does kind of suck seeing him go at the end, we do have two more games left and that’s what hurts the most but at the end of the day, it’s a business and we have to move on,” Hutcherson said. “As far as this week, it was very hard but at the end of the day, we gotta keep moving and that’s what he would want us to do.”

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Even though they lost to Missouri 17-10, a second-half quarterback change to freshman Luke Doty gave the offense a spark, and the defense held Missouri scoreless in the second half, giving the team and fans some much-needed optimism moving forward.

Doty, who was recruited by Muschamp in the 2020 class, saw his first extended time against the Tigers in what was an emotional game for him.

“This week was rough for the first couple days. Losing coach Muschamp is not ideal but coach Bobo did a great job coming in and really rallying the troops and getting us ready to play this week," "I definitely think he did just that. He got us ready to play. Going forward he’s going to do the exact same thing.”

The Gamecocks had four opt-outs immediately after the firing, leaving the Gamecocks shorthanded at a few different positions.

What happened after that, though, was a team coming together and giving players something to build on with two games left.

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“I wouldn’t say it was a moral victory but I would say come Sunday or Tuesday, whatever day we go in the building, everybody’s morale will be up even more,” Jones said. “Everybody will be a little bit more focused coming into the week than we were this past week with everything that was going on.”

Hutcherson and Jones were both able to take some positives from Saturday’s game despite the crazy week that proceeded it.

“With all the adversity we had this week, I don’t think anybody can be mad at us," Hutcherson said. "I told my guys to keep their heads up and I’m proud of them regardless.”