Bye weeks are good for a lot of reasons, and South Carolina’s comes at a perfect time.

The Gamecocks are fresh off a 28-point loss on the road to LSU, and enter the open week needing to find a lot of answers on both sides of the ball before their remaining five games.

For Will Muschamp, he knows exactly what he’s looking for from his team as they try to go through some in-season corrections.

“I think overall improvement on the defensive side of the ball. Early on we gave up more explosive passes than we have and that was extremely disappointed,” he said. “I think the run defense hasn’t been what we needed it to be the last couple weeks. We need to improve on both levels as far as our run defense is concerned and our pass defense is concerned.”

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The defense has done some good things, ranking in the top half in the SEC in both red zone and third down defense, but is allowing opponents to average 30 points per game and 7.9 yards per pass attempt.

Over the last three weeks South Carolina has allowed almost 600 yards on the ground with teams averaging over five yards per carry.

Offensively the Gamecocks are averaging 29.2 points per game and have one of the best rushing attacks in the league, but haven’t had the type of explosiveness Muschamp and Mike Bobo wanted headed into the year.

Muschamp said Shi Smith has been “outstanding,” called Deshaun Fenwick and Kevin Harris “really good” and said Nick Muse has “been a very good tight end for us,” but they need more offensively.

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“We need to explore for more explosive players on offense,” Muschamp said. “We need somebody else to emerge like Jalen Brooks, and we’ll get some other guys involved offensively to give us some more opportunities to move the ball down the field. We’re coming off a game where we needed to finish some drives. You average eight yards per play; that’s pretty explosive offensively. We have to continue to find more guys offensively that can put us in a position to score.”

The Gamecock head coach also shook things up this week on special teams, taking kickoff duties away from Mitch Jeter and giving them to Parker White, who will kickoff and placekick after the bye week.

We need to be more consistent there with the placement of the ball, the depth and direction and the hang time is an issue,” he said. “Kai (Kroeger) continues to come on and punt well for us.”

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During the bye week, Muschamp also said Ryan Hilinski and Luke Doty are taking reps with the first team and he’s been pleased with that as well.

“They’re taken the majority of the reps at the quarterback position and I think both guys are making progress,” he said. “Both guys are battling it out and doing a good job. I’ve been very pleased with both guys.”

The Gamecocks host Texas A&M immediately after the bye before having road games at Ole Miss and Kentucky with home games against Missouri and Georgia.