Scott Davis has followed Gamecock sports for more than 30 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. You can reach Scott at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com.

I got texts throughout the week.

“You still going to the game Saturday?”

There was palpable disbelief when I answered each time that I was. Even I wasn’t totally sure I believed I was going.

By the time I met some friends and family members out to celebrate my wife’s birthday in our hometown of Greenville Friday night, I’d started adding unnecessary details to explain our weekend plans, like “Yeah, we usually only get to one USC game a year since we moved to Atlanta and this just ended up being the best time for us to do it.” And people were responding to this news by grimacing and saying things like, “Oh wow, OK, so y’all really are going tomorrow, huh? Wow.”

After all, the Gamecocks had started an ugly 1-3, and each of the three losses had been peculiarly deflating in its own special way. The North Carolina game had been well in hand and then inexplicably frittered away. The Alabama game was a blowout that pointed out yet again just how far away South Carolina was from competing for SEC championships. The Missouri game was…whatever.

And now the Kentucky Wildcats were in town.

Kentucky, of course, was the one team the Gamecocks had traditionally owned in Southeastern Conference play. Not too terribly long ago, USC beat the Wildcats for an entire decade straight. Then the bottom fell out, and to the bewildered and ever-growing frustration of Gamecocks fans everywhere, UK entered this contest with an unthinkable five-game winning streak over South Carolina.

I’ll admit to contemplating what it might feel like to watch the freaking Kentucky Wildcats of Lexington, Kentucky waltz into Williams-Brice Stadium and notch their sixth – yes, sixth – straight win over my alma mater.

I will admit to all of you – my friends, my people, right here on Gamecock Central – that I had a dark vision of me sitting alone in the stadium, my head down, panic throbbing through my arms and legs, as the Mighty Sound of the Southeast played a somber version of “Amazing Grace” and the Gamecocks walked off the field with yet another loss in the series.

When my father-in-law steered the car onto the Bluff Road exit from I-77 to take us to the stadium, I looked around me and saw…nothing.

“There’s no traffic,” I told my pop-in-law.

“I’ve never seen it this dead,” he said.

Was I the only person attending this thing?

Then we pulled into our parking lot.

That’s when I saw the people. Tailgaters. Guys in garnet pants. Girls in cowboy boots and black dresses. Tents. Coolers. A band pumping out a feverish cover of “Brickhouse.” To-go cups. Caps and flags and cars, cars and more cars.

It looked festive, maybe even a little wild.

You know what it looked like? Williams-Brice Stadium at night during football season.

By the time I sidestepped throngs of fans at the souvenir shop across from the Fairgrounds and dragged my body over to the West stands, I realized I never had anything to worry about. It was Saturday night at Williams-Brice Stadium. It turned out that there were a lot of people besides me who’d decided to attend a South Carolina-Kentucky football game – tens of thousands of them, in fact.

Their football team was 1-3, the 2019 season was going absolutely nowhere and doing it at the speed of light, and here they were, nearly 80,000 beautiful people in garnet and black, bedazzled in Script Carolina gear, their faces painted, the hearts surging, their hopes intact.

Hope.

It was here.

Somehow, after everything, it was still flickering.

How do these fans keep doing it? How do I keep doing it?

Because I felt it, too. I couldn’t wait to get into the stadium, to feel that first jolt at the sight of the shockingly green field, to hear those bouncing and bumping rap choruses floating across the student section, to feel like I was a part of this thing that we have together and never let go of, no matter how bad and sometimes how ridiculous it gets.

Now the band was swaying and the crowd was easing into that see-sawing “Gaaaaaaaaaaaame……Cooooooooooooooocks” chant, and you could see the team walking slowly through the tunnel right there up on the gigantic video board above the students, and the white towels were waving in every corner of the old place on George Rogers Boulevard, and those first few notes of “2001” are humming and now you believe, you care and there’s no going back.

And that’s when the texts started. Again.

“Wow, the crowd looks great! And loud!”

And it was.

We were.

We were here, we cared, and I couldn’t believe it, but we hoped.

And this is what you get in return for all that you give to this program, for all the times you wonder why you still care, why you don’t just turn off your heart and delete your passion and walk away from this thing for good – this is what you get. These moments when you are part of something bigger than you, something you’re not even sure you entirely understand, but you know it belongs to you and everybody else there.

It is something you cannot name.

But it sounds like the crowd at Williams-Brice Stadium right at that moment when “2001” begins.

And it feels like hope.

In the life of every South Carolina Gamecock fan will come a week like the last one after USC fell apart 10,000 different ways up in Missouri. The bitter aftermath felt predictable and almost strangely necessary, like when you burn parts of a forest to wipe out the deadwood and give something new and better a chance to grow. And as much as Gamecock fans declared war on each other with arguments about firing coaches and athletic directors and everyone associated with the program, they also seemed to join together by the weekend, pulling themselves into an uneasy truce to fill up Williams-Brice one more time for a Saturday night in September. Nowhere was the unity more pronounced than in the fan base’s shared loathing of The State newspaper, which debased itself by printing a headline following the Missouri game that read “Hilinski Hope Sinks” (you can read my take on this absurd episode here: https://southcarolina.rivals.com/news/scott-davis-island-of-the-lost). That’s why our first Game Balls go to:

The USC Students Who Painted Their Chests to Spell Out “Hope Never Sinks” – These guys had a prominent spot in the stands and made their presence known early and often. It didn’t go unnoticed. After the game, quarterback Ryan Hilinski visited with the students and even led them in a moving prayer before slapping fives with fans around the field. You can watch the post-game events unfold here: https://www.instagram.com/tv/B2-2UvYpH1i/?igshid=98vro50r2wzm. South Carolina still has a long, uphill climb if it hopes to even get bowl-eligible this season, and more than likely, there will be still more weeks to come that look and feel an awful lot like the last one did, but for at least a few moments after USC put the finishing touches on a 24-7 win against Kentucky that finally broke that ridiculous streak of Wildcat wins, it felt like the fans gave each other a huge, collective hug.

Running the Running Game Into the Ground – After South Carolina gave up on the running game quickly in Columbia, Missouri, coach Will Muschamp vowed that he’d insist on a commitment to it going forward. That commitment became emphatically clear by the time four quarters had elapsed on Saturday night. When the (three yards and a cloud of) dust settled, Carolina boasted two 100-yard rushers for the game in Rico Dowdle and Tavien Feaster. The Gamecock offense wasn’t explosive by any stretch of the imagination, but after it became clear that Kentucky couldn’t keep its own offense on the field for longer than a nanosecond, USC burned the clock and churned out enough yardage to win comfortably.

Pressure – South Carolina’s defense constantly harassed Kentucky quarterback Sawyer Smith, who ended up performing exactly like you would expect a quarterback named “Sawyer Smith” to perform. The Gamecocks sacked Smith four times and made his life miserable on just about every other snap, and the Wildcats compiled a paltry 212 yards of total offense (they hadn’t even cracked triple-digits in total yards by the time the second half rolled around). Look, is this Kentucky team banged up in key positions and has their offense been struggling? Yes. Still, this South Carolina defense needed something to feel good about, something other than a decent effort against a collection of warm bodies known as “Charleston Southern.” This was that something.

My Wife’s Spirited Cheering, a Middle-Aged Man Dancing, Towels Waving and an Unexpectedly Festive Atmosphere During the First Half at Williams-Brice Stadium – Though the late hour and the healthy-ish Gamecock lead resulted in some lethargy in the stands by the end of Saturday’s game, I was surprised by just how fun it felt inside the Friendly Confines during the first half. It helped having my wife there for her first in-person game in a couple of years, and it also helped that she was celebrating her birthday. At my age, I’m one of those people who is actively trying to forget my own birthday and to convince others that it isn’t actually happening, but not her – she actually celebrates her existence on this earth, and she celebrated every long Gamecock run and every satisfying Gamecock sack with joyful fist pumps and upbeat screaming. Later in the game, we (and every other fan in the stadium) marveled as the in-house cameras kept finding a middle-aged fan whose dance moves mesmerized the crowd from the Jumbotron. It was a feel-good couple of hours all around. You could really tell just how much this fan base needed to smile.

Not Having to Hear Sports Radio Guys, Media Dudes, Other Fans and Myself Talking About South Carolina’s Strange, Mystifying Inability to Beat the Kentucky Wildcats in Football Even Though South Carolina Has Better Football Players Than Kentucky – So, soooooo glad that’s over for the next year.

Bye Weeks – I’m looking forward to a drama-free Saturday. Admit it: So are you.

Feel-good win or not, we can’t get out of here without letting the air out of a few balls, especially the following:

South Carolina’s Offense Becoming a Well-Oiled Three-and-Out Machine in the Second Half – Much as I enjoyed the Dowdle-Feaster Show and the yard-churning effort anchored by USC’s run-blocking, the Gamecock offense was so vanilla in the second half that I started waiting for the band to serenade them with “Ice, Ice Baby” every time they walked onto the field. South Carolina gave punter Joseph Charlton an astonishing nine opportunities to show off his leg on Saturday night, and as good as this win felt for everyone watching in the stands and at home, that wasn’t the kind of offensive performance that could make you forget the Missouri game, or the North Carolina game, or the fact that Georgia is the next opponent. Speaking of punting…

Whatever Was Going On With South Carolina’s Punt Return Effort (or Lack Thereof) – Much like the Gamecocks, the Wildcats punted the football again and again throughout the contest. But the men in garnet and black couldn’t figure out what to do with UK punter Max Duffy’s wobbly kicks. We saw a little bit of everything in this one, and none of it was good: Gamecock special teams player Darius Rush had a punt bounce off his back to give the football right back to the Wildcats, while punt returner Bryan Edwards seemed utterly disinterested in getting within 20 yards of Duffy’s punts. Every time Kentucky punted the ball, I noticed myself getting nervous, and that nervousness was almost always justified. It felt like South Carolina started 75% of its offensive possessions from its own nine-yard line.

The Extremely Inebriated Fan Sitting Behind Me Who Spent the Entire Game Making Fun of Clemson Loudly and Insistently Because the Tigers Only Won by One Point Against UNC – Let’s remember that we would have been ecstatic to record a one-point win, a half-point win or any kind of win against North Carolina, but whatever. Look, I’ve been Obnoxious Fan many, many times in my football-watching career, and I’ve admitted that again and again in this column. So this is not the pot calling the kettle black, because at various times in my life, I’ve been the pot, the kettle – hell, the entire stovetop. I get it. Sometimes those tailgates can get away from you. But my God, after listening to the College GameDay guys drone on about Clemson’s glorious excellence every Saturday, I really wanted to spend just a few sweet hours in my own stadium not thinking about them at all. The guy behind me made very sure that wouldn’t happen. Which is why I spent a little too much time thinking about stuffing my rally towel in his mouth.

I didn’t, though.

I waved it proudly, like the other 80,000 people there.

We all know what’s ahead. We all know what this season looks like.

Still, we hope.

This is what we have.

And it does not sink.