Mullen weighs in on Collin Hill, South Carolina's offense

Collin Hill will make his first road start at South Carolina Saturday, heading to Gainesville to take on a fourth-ranked Florida team, but it won’t be his first trip down to the Swamp in his career or his first time against a Dan Mullen-led team.

Hill, and mike Bobo, took the Colorado State down to Florida in 2018, Mullen’s first year there.

Now the two will square off again with Hill the Gamecocks’ starting quarterback.

“He knows the offense, knows the system and knows the checks. You can see it,” Mullen said of Hill Wednesday. “He made good decisions with the football. He put them in a position at the end to win the game but they just had a special teams mishap that didn’t work out that way for them.”

Also see: Erik Kimery gives his take on the season-opening loss

In the game two years ago Hill came off the bench and threw eight passes, completing two for 23 yards in a 48-10 loss.

That was two years and a few ACL injuries ago for Hill, who came off his third ACL injury this offseason after he transferred to South Carolina to be with Bobo and ultimately won the starting quarterback job before the opener.

In his Gamecock debut Hill completed 64.1 percent of his passes for 290 yards with one touchdown and a pick-six, and he also rushed for a score in the second half.

He really clicked in the second half, going 13-for-20 with a touchdown,191 yards and averaging 9.6 yards per attempt.

It’s a little different this time around with Hill having different personnel around him at South Carolina but the scheme Mullen’s coached against before is much the same.

“We’ve faced the scheme before but not the players,” Mullen said.

Mullen’s already broken down the Gamecock’s 31-27 loss to Tennessee Saturday, and said on the SEC Teleconference Wednesday he saw some things that could give the Gators trouble Saturday.

Also see: Looking at some hotly-contested recruiting battles between Florida

“They do a good job formationally of getting you into different formations and trying to get you into formation checks to throw the ball that way,” Mullen said. “They do a good job formationally of getting the defense in certain looks so they know what the look is going to be then scheme the pass game off of that.”

The Gamecocks (0-1) were balanced in their attack, rushing 35 times to 39 pass attempts, which Mullen says can cause some issues. Mullen said Bobo is going to try vehemently to run the ball, and that can set the pass game up for the Gamecocks.

It did to a degree against Tennessee with the Gamecocks scoring 20 points after halftime while averaging just shy of four yards per carry.

“I thought they did a good job mixing it up,” Mullen said. “(Bobo) has a good system and good packages. Obviously they want to run the football and did a good job within their scheme of running the football. Then they have the complimentary pass game off it."