After explaining the rationale for taking over seven minutes on a drive Saturday in a two-score game, Will Muschamp was asked about it again Sunday night on his weekly teleconference and offered a little more insight on what happened.

The Gamecocks' head coach talked about what went in to some of the decisions to sub in and out personnel and bleeding clock on a drive that took over seven minutes with South Carolina needing a touchdown, a stop and another touchdown to force overtime.

Below is his full answer.

“We didn’t want to run seven minutes off the clock. At the end of the day we wanted to score a touchdown. We needed a touchdown to make it a one-score game. In that situation, after we got the fourth down conversion, I want to say there was a little above five minutes left in the game.

We talked on the sideline in terms of wanting to speed it up. Collin dropped back the next snap and had a scramble and ran out of bounds on our sideline. We had the sprint out to Rico (Powers), which got another first down. Then we had a series that created some issues for us.

From my standpoint, from a time management standpoint, you have two timeouts left. If we score a touchdown within two-and-a-half or three minutes we can kick the ball deep, use our timeouts and have an opportunity to get the ball back with no timeouts.

Generally, if we have two timeouts on a change of possession or we kick, they can run off anywhere between 44 and 48 seconds, all right? So we’re getting the ball back with 45 seconds to a minute, which really is a long time in college football because the clock stops on first downs. That’s what we were hoping for in that situation.

(Hill) scrambles, the clock continues to run, we run a RPO thinking we’re going to throw it and they jump in two-man and we had an opportunity for an explosive run there. We didn’t cut off the guard or we got a big run.

The clock’s still running but now it’s third and two. You go back to the start of the drive and we have to score a touchdown. It’s about now we have to get the first down. We had a play signaled in, and Collin changed it at the line. It took a little longer than obviously what we wanted to running the power play. We only get one yard. Instead of calling timeout there, we made a decision. They were gassed on defense and we’d rather put our big people in the game, which we did, on fourth and one to make sure we got the first down.

Let’s make sure we go back to the goal of the drive being to score a touchdown. That’s what we had to have in order to give us a chance. We get the fourth down conversion and we’re under two minutes to play. Obviously we’re in a situation where we’re going to have to onside kick with just two timeouts after a score. We threw a swing pass to Kevin (Harris) and he gets the first down. I wished he’d gotten out of bounds but he’s fighting to get the first down. Clock stops on a first down, and then we get four incomplete passes.

In a perfect world, we’d like to have three minutes on the clock with two timeouts to go and you’re kicking the ball deep off a touchdown because that’s what we needed to do in order to I’ve ourselves a chance to win the game.

I said in the postgame we needed to be crisper and we needed to be faster after the fourth down conversion, which was discussed on the headsets. We needed to be faster. I’ve said that and I don’t know how many more times I have to say it.

We needed to be faster and crisper at the line getting things called. Now, another issue is when you go true one-minute offense you’re limited formationally where you put people. In that situation we were doing a good job as far as moving Shi (Smith) around in different spots to give him different opportunities.

That’s right now where we are. They were playing more quarters coverage, two-man as far as pushing the ball farther down the field in those situations. Collin got some good scrambles and we have to continue to work through those things.

But yes, we wanted to be faster in the operation after the fourth down conversion. It was discussed on the headsets and it wasn’t executed as well as we would have liked. We had some unfortunate down and distances come up on the drive as we were trying to save two timeouts to try and win the game.”