Muschamp uses unconventional method to motivate Gamecocks

Will Muschamp wanted to make sure his team didn’t get overconfident after its upset over Tennessee last week, and he had an unusual way of doing it.

“I put mousetraps all over the place to let them know not to take the cheese. Everyone’s patting you on the back and telling you how good you are but you have to understand this football team coming in here is certainly capable,” Muschamp said. “We need to understand that and not take the cheese.”

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That’s right, mousetraps. The things set up to stop rodents from scrabbling through walls and chewing up floorboards was used as a motivational tactic this week.

The first-year head coach rigged an Indiana-Jones style minefield of snapping booby traps designed not to rip off toes but to teach players not to get too big of a head going into Saturday’s game against Missouri.

It paid off with the Gamecocks winning 31-21, but it wasn’t before a few near-death appearances in the locker room. Most of them were unset by the coaching staff, but players quickly changed that.

“We had a bunch of mousetraps, actually around the locker room, around the meeting room, around the weight room. There were a bunch,” placekicker Elliott Fry said. “Most of them weren’t set but then some of the guys started to set them and then throwing them at each other.”

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It started off innocently enough, with strength and conditioning coach Jeff Dillman texting players warning them not to take the cheese. Linebacker TJ Holloman said he didn’t expect much else from those texts until he saw the little metal contraptions littering the floors.

By the middle of the week, Dillman was in full-blown mousetrap mania.

“He was the mousetrap man,” Holloman said. “He was throwing them at us all week just telling us don’t bite the cheese, don’t settle in after last week’s win.”

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South Carolina didn’t take the literal cheese during the week or the proverbial cheese on Saturday, pulling out a victory over the Tigers to move one win away from bowl eligibility.

The Gamecocks (5-4, 3-4 SEC) have games against Florida, Western Carolina and Clemson left on the schedule.

There’s still no reason to take the cheese quite yet, but the Gamecocks could be playing football in December.

“We’re not going to back off of it,” Muschamp said. “We’re by no means where we need to be. But we’ve improved, and I think people can see that.”