Opportunistic defense sets tone as Gamecocks win third straight
Giving up 465 yards of offense and 302 through the air doesn’t really lend itself to winning, yet it was the Gamecocks who pulled out a 31-21 victory over Missouri and were able to romp around the field Mayor’s Trophy in-hand.
South Carolina (5-4, 3-4 SEC) used its standard-bend-but don’t break style of defense to limit the Tigers to just 21 point on 13 drives. Nine of those drives were at least 25 yards, but only three ended with points.
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The reason? The Gamecocks were able to force three turnovers, capitalizing on all three on the ensuing drive. One ended in a touchdown, another ended the half and the final turnover—a Chris Moody interception—ended Missouri’s chance at a comeback.
“That’s what we’re built off of, the turnovers,” linebacker TJ Holloman said. “That’s what we talk about every day. Our goal is to lead the SEC in turnovers. We were behind two to Texas A&M this week and I don’t know if they got any this week but our goal was to take first place.”
Texas A&M forced two turnovers in a loss to Mississppi State, so they didn’t take the lead, but did cut it to just a one-turnover lead.
South Carolina came into Saturday’s game tied with Vanderbilt and Georgia atop the SEC with a plus-6 turnover margin. At the end of the game, the Gamecocks’ margin grew to plus-10.
Chris Lammons started the turnover party with a fumble recovery in the first quarter before Rashad Fenton picked off a Drew Lock deep ball in the third quarter. Then, Chris Lammons iced the game with less than a minute to go, picking off Lock in the end zone to clinch the 10-point victory.
Missouri was 1-for-2 in the red zone and 8-of-18 on third down, both of which are preached just as much as turnovers.
“We’ve got to be an opportunistic defense. We have to; we’re not dominant enough right now,” head coach Will Muschamp said. “Going into the year we had to play really good on third down and we’ve been average on third down. We need to play really good defense in the red zone and we’ve played outstanding red zone defense and we’ve gotten turnovers. We needed to be that kind of defense right now. It’s just who we are.”
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Fenton came in for Lammons, who was ejected for the second straight game due to targeting, and contributed with the interception and five tackles including one for a loss.
He and Jamarcus King played well in the secondary and fellow defensive back Moody led the team with nine tackles. Muschamp said the defense has this mentality because of coaching and getting players to understand concepts instead of just knowing plays.
“It’s not necessarily memorization; it’s just about making a call and we apply our concepts to splits and to formations and to different things we do. We change it up week to week; we’re not constantly sitting in the same thing over and over and over again. Our cover corners cover well outside—Jamarcus King, Chris Lammons, Rashad Fenton— which frees us up inside to do some different things.”
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The Gamecocks are now one win away from a bowl game, needing a victory over either Florida, Western Carolina or Clemson to make a postseason for the first time since the 2014-15 season.
The chance at December football comes after a three-game winning streak spurred after the bye week. That, Holloman said, was a turning point in and it could result in the Gamecocks getting a few more days of practice and the chance for some hardware at the end of the season.
“We just came together,” he said. “After the bye week we said it’s a new season, and we’ve been undefeated since the bye week. We just all bought into the program.”