On Tuesday, Derek Mason called this week’s game with South Carolina a street fight and after he said that, it didn’t take long for the Gamecocks to hear it. And hear it again, and again.
The Gamecocks who were reminded of Mason's comments daily by the coaching staff, admitted they took it personally and responded with a dominant showing on both lines of scrimmage.
“If you want to try and call somebody out, you better know who you’re calling out before you call them out,” Zack Bailey said. “That’s the bottom line.”
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Will Muschamp made it a point to show that clip and reference it at least twice a day leading up to the game and again before the team left the hotel Saturday afternoon.
And it seems they responded in the right way.
They dominated on the line of scrimmage for almost the entire game, rushing for a season-high 273 yards and not giving up a sack on Jake Bentley for the first time this season.
“We heard about it,” Bentley said, chuckling. “He called us out to come fight and that’s what we did. We’d have played in a stadium, backyard, street. We ran for 273 yards. I think the O-linemen probably took it personally.”
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Rico Dowdle, who finished with 112 yards and averaged 5.6 yards per carry, led them on the ground.
He had the Gamecocks’ second touchdown of the day, pounding it in from two yards out, and celebrated by shadow boxing as an homage to Mason’s comments.
“If a guy wants to say something like that, we’re going to come out and attack,” he said.
The Gamecocks (2-1, 1-1 SEC) pounded the Commodores 37-14 Saturday in the team’s first double-digit win at Vanderbilt since 2010, pushing the winning streak in the series to 10 games.
They also had eight tackles for loss, including two sacks on Vanderbilt quarterback Kyle Shurmur.
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They may not have needed the added motivation to win, but coming out of Saturday’s game with a win after the comments—which ends with "as soon as you say ding, ding, ding it goes"—makes it that much better.
And, like Bryson Allen-Williams said, there's "no ding-ding in a street fight.”
“I feel sorry for him,” Bailey said. “He’s probably wishing he could take that back. You try and call someone out, especially for us the offensive line, it’s personal for us. We took it upon us in practice and we’re going to do our job.”
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