When a pitcher gets close to a perfect game, no one talks to him, no one acknowledges him and lets him go about his business while avoiding him at all costs.
If this season was a baseball game, Kevin Harris is heading to the mound pitching a perfect game in the eighth inning, agonizingly close to one of the biggest milestones for a running back at the college level: 1,000 yards.
“We communicate that amongst ourselves. I was just checking the other day. I was checking his stats and I was like, ‘Hey, 125 away. You can get it within the next two games and we can get that 1,000 yard mark,’” Deshaun Fenwick said. “We don’t talk about it much amongst the team but just me an him, we have conversations about it from time to time.”
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Harris currently sits at 875 yards after eight games, 125 yards away from being the first running back at South Carolina to eclipse the 1,000-yard mark since 2013 with Mike Davis.
The sophomore running back already has the third-most rushing yards of any running back since 2000 through eight games, and has been a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy 2020 for South Carolina, but what fails to be mentioned is just how historically good this year’s been for Harris.
For starters, a look at the raw stats: 147 carries, 875 yards (6.0 yards per carry), 13 touchdowns. Even if he doesn’t score again this year, he’ll finish fourth in school history for rushing touchdowns in a single season.
He’s currently on pace for 183.8 carries, 1,093.8 yards and 16.3 touchdowns, which would make him the Gamecocks’ first 1,000 rusher in seven years.
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If that holds, he’d finish with the seventh most rushing yards in a single season at South Carolina and the second-most rushing touchdowns.
“It’s really cool, I’m not going to lie. He’s worked hard all offseason and this season he’s been doing really well,” Fenwick said. “I’m really happy for him, to be honest with you.”
But let’s take this one step further, because Harris is putting up monster numbers in a 10-game schedule. What would this kind of season look like if the Gamecocks played a full 12-game slate?
Extrapolating things out, if Harris kept up the same pace over the course of 12 games, he’d finish with 220.5 carries, 1,312.5 yards and 19.5 touchdowns in what would be considered a full season.
If that were the case, Harris’s 2020 season could be considered arguably the best rushing season this century.
The 19 touchdowns would be a new school record and the 1,312 yards would be the third-most in school history behind George Roger’s Heisman season (1,894 yards) and Roger’s 1979 season (1,681). The 220 carries would be fifth all time behind Rogers in 1979 and 1980, Marcus Lattimore in 2010 and Harold Green in 1987.
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Harris has two more games—home against Georgia and at Kentucky—to run himself into rarified air as one of just seven rushers in school history to reach 1,000 yards in a season. Rogers, Greene, Duce Staley, Derek Watson, Lattimore and Kevin Long are the others.
He’s been one of the best backs in the SEC this season, and in the country with PFF numbers to back that up.
He’s top 30 in the SEC among qualified running backs in elusive rating and the fourth-best back in the league in breakaway percentage (46.9). He has the 10-best PFF grade (79.1) among running backs, third-most yards after contact (394) and is fifth in avoided tackles (25).
Harris leads the SEC in attempts and yards, third in yards per attempt, second in total touchdowns. He’s second in the conference with 23 rushes of 10-plus yards and leads the league in rushes of over 20 yards with eight.
Harris will be the first to downplay his season and downplay the things he’s good, but the Gamecocks’ sophomore has turned into one of the best backs in the SEC this season and is having a historically good year.
