Stopping the run game has popped up as being the Achilles heel of the South Carolina defense multiple times this season. It popped up again Saturday night against Clemson.
While the Gamecock defense was able to keep DJ Uiagalelei from making many plays with his arm they weren't able to keep the lid on Will Shipley and the Clemson run game.
"We wanted to stop the run, we didn't do a good enough job of that," head coach Shane Beamer said. "We wanted to make the quarterback beat us, he was nine of 19 for 99 yards and an interception."
While the Gamecocks may have stopped Uiagalelei from making a major impact in the passing game, the Clemson rush attack was allowed to shine. Going into the game Beamer said he felt good about the defensive game plan to stop the run.
"I thought our defense was good going into it," Beamer said. "We knew we needed to stop the run and obviously they ran the ball 43 times for 265 yards; we didn't do a good enough job of that."
The Tiger offense did indeed run the ball 43 times for 265 yards and Shipley accounted for 19 of those attempts and 128 of those yards, tying his season high for yards and setting a new season high averaging 6.7 yards per carry.
"The back's a really good player," Beamer said. "The back's got great vision, Shipley does, and he's able to dart around in there and find a crease and spit out of there."
Three of the four Clemson running backs that got a carry on Saturday were able to score a touchdown. Shipley, Kobe Pace and Phil Mafah all had one rushing touchdown and those three touchdowns accounted for all of Clemson's scores that weren't field goals.
Pace finished with seven carries and 58 yards, averaging 8.3 yards per carry and Mafah finished with 11 carries and 43 yards.
As for what went wrong with the defense, defensive lineman Jabari Ellis said he'd had to go back and watch the tape to point out a specific thing but that it basically boils down to execution of fundamentals.
"It's all about game plan and fitting gaps and all types of things that go into it," Ellis said.
Defensive back Jaylan Foster echoed Ellis saying that schematically Clemson wasn't doing anything new, rather it came down to run fits.
"They weren't doing nothing that we didn't see on film, a lot of it was us getting out of our gaps," Foster said. "A lot of times we just wasn't standing in our gaps and they were finding that hole and they were hitting it. In these types of games you have to stay in your gap and make those plays."
Beamer agreed with his two players that it came down to staying in your gaps.
"Just didn't do a great job of just staying in our gap and trying to do too much at times," Beamer said.
The silver lining that Beamer found was that defense did improve after struggling early against the run.
Clemson ran for 193 rushing yards in the first half and only 72 in the second half. The Tigers yards per carry also decreased from 7.7 yards per carry in the first half to four yards per carry in the second half.
With it's performance Clemson became the fifth team on the list of teams to run for more than 200 yards against the Gamecocks, a list South Carolina hopes not to add to in it's bowl matchup later in December.
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