The game peaked in one swoop, and now South Carolina football has to hope its season didn’t as well.
In front of College GameDay an ABC audience and a borderline feral Williams-Brice Stadium crowd, South Carolina took a 17-0 lead over No. 16 LSU after Maurice Brown II blocked a punt to set up a Rocket Sanders touchdown run one play later.
But then it all fell apart, one painstaking missed tackle, failed blocking assignment and LSU burst at a time. The Tigers emerged from Columbia with a 36-33 win, extinguishing the flames from a fiery morning in and around the stadium.
As the home student section surged towards the hedges at Williams-Brice Stadium hoping for a field storming with their Gamecocks leading 33-29 at the two-minute timeout, LSU was working on its lengthy game-winning drive.
It all culminated with Josh Williams rushed in from two yards out to give the Tigers the lead with just 1:12 remaining, the straw that broke the camel's back on a day where the Gamecocks continued to put their defense in bad situations, and it battled hard to overcome them.
Alex Herrera had one final chance to force overtime from 49 yards out, but missed the game-tying field goal to secure a wild victory for the visitors.
Even with a 17-0 lead, it felt like South Carolina (2-1, 1-1 SEC) should have more. That it might need more. It was only natural. Even within those 17 points, LaNorris Sellers threw an interception in the end zone, the offense stalled out on a red zone possession to settle for a field goal, and O’Donnell Fortune had a pick six taken off the board by a horse collar call on Kyle Kennard. It was the first of two personal fouls on Kennard which erased pick sixes, with an uneccessary roughness call overturning one in the fourth quarter.
It was only a matter of time before LSU’s (2-1, 1-0 SEC) offense got rolling, and it did take advantage of the extra lives South Carolina provided. Caden Durham opened the scoring for LSU with a 26-yard touchdown run, and the offense quickly came up with another field goal off a Sellers fumble.
Just in time for Sellers to immediately make up for it in the best way possible. He reeled off the longest touchdown run by a quarterback in South Carolina history, 75 yards to the house streaking towards a frenzied student section to restore a 14-point lead.
And then in a game which felt like it lived about a dozen lives within itself, came the period where it looked like every bit the mismatch the talent gap would lead you to believe it was. A string of 19 unanswered points for LSU, and even that was lower than it should have been after South Carolina’s defense bowed up for a stop after surrendering first-and-goal from the 2-yard-line.
Punch after punch landed from the visiting offense, with no response from the home team. Sellers took a sack on the penultimate play of the first half and only returned for one series, leaving the signal-calling duties to Robby Ashford.
And the offensive burden on Sanders, the marquee transfer who delivered his shining moment in a Gamecock uniform to date when he busted loose on a 65-yard touchdown run to stop LSU’s run and restore South Carolina’s lead.
And sure enough, he did.
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