Muschamp: Collin Hill 'gives us our best chance to win right now'

Four years ago, coming out of a bye week, the Gamecocks opted to make a change at quarterback with Jake Bentley taking over the role in 2016.

This year coming off a bye it doesn’t appear the Gamecocks will be changing the starter at quarterback.

Will Muschamp, when asked, said Collin Hill is the team’s starter.

“We’re going to give Ryan and Luke a bunch of reps this week along with Collin,” Muschamp said. “We feel like Collin gives us our best chance to win right now. Certainly we’re going to give Ryan and Luke (reps). That was the plan before Saturday night anyways to continue to develop that position.”

Also see: Teleconference recap from Sunday

Hill is 2-3 in his first season as South Carolina’s starter and has had a largely up-and-down season.

The graduate transfer is completing over 61 percent of his passes and averaging a pedestrian 6.9 yards per attempt but is coming off arguably his worst performance of the season in a loss to LSU.

Against the Tigers he completed just 12 of his 22 attempts for 234 yards with a pick-six included. His lone touchdown came in garbage time, a five-yard score to Josh Vann.

“I think Collin will tell you he needs to play better than he did last night. He did create explosive plays down the field,” Muschamp said. “He directs our offense extremely well, gets us in and out of the run game. A lot of the run game we have are run checks he’s making at the line of scrimmage, which are the correct checks.”

After the game Saturday, Muschamp didn’t answer if he contemplated playing either Ryan Hilinski or Luke Doty, the team’s backups, but doubled down Sunday saying he thinks Hill’s done a good job through the first half of the season.

“In five games we’re not where we want to be as far as our record is concerned or where we need to be offensively,” Muschamp said, “but he’s done a nice job of playing some situational football and playing in the red zone.”

Also see: What went right, what went wrong against LSU

The Gamecocks (2-3) had a unique day against LSU, averaging close to eight yards per play—which is really good—but mustering just 24 points, tying a season low.

“Mike (Bobo) said it best: you have to finish drives. We didn’t finish drives. We missed three field goals; we turned the ball over on downs on the ninth drive of the game,” Muscahmp said. “We have to finish some drives. When Israel had the interception we returned the ball down and we’ve got to cash in on that. We did last week against auburn and had a totally different result.