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What South Carolina worked on during unanticipated bye week

When South Carolina takes the field against Vanderbilt, it’ll end a 14-day stretch where the Gamecocks didn’t play a competitive football game.

The Gamecocks had an unexpected bye week thrust on them with Hurricane Florence canceling their game against Marshall, giving players a few extra practices to clean up some of the things that went wrong in last week’s loss to Georgia.

Photo by Montez Aiken
Photo by Montez Aiken
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“We’re going to do so many tackling drills this week. I can guarantee that. Those are things that can be fixed. It just comes down to technique and confidence,” linebacker T.J. Brunson said. “Those things are going to be fixed.”

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But it’s a little more complicated than that.

Head coach Will Muschamp said there was a larger problem that contributed to the Gamecocks missing a lot of tackles.

The problem came more in the second half with Georgia scoring on its first three possessions of the first half and running for more than 160 yards after halftime.

“At the end of the day, we didn’t communicate very well, which puts you in position to not make the tackle,” Muschamp said. “So to me, it was more of a communication issue and an urgency to align issue as much as anything else.”

Also see: Breaking down Will Muschamp's first class at South Carolina

So the Gamecocks went to work on that this week in practice trying to fix some of the miscommunication issues.

Some of that stemmed from having a few young players still trying to get their feet wet; Jaycee Horn had a miscommunication that resulted in a big play for the Bulldogs and there were a few other defensive breakdowns as well.

To fix that, the Gamecocks have practiced more with the first team against other first-teamers.

After the Marshall game was canceled, Muschamp said the Gamecocks had a more training camp-style practice Thursday focusing on South Carolina and not an opponent.

“We decided we need to do more good on good work. If there was a huge discrepancy with what we did schematically, we probably wouldn’t have done that,” Muschamp said. “But in looking at their tape and offense and defense, we felt like it would be better for us to work a lot more against each other.”

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The Gamecocks had that practice Thursday and had a weight lifting session Friday before getting an off day Saturday.

The team will return to the practice field Sunday to start preparing for Vanderbilt in what will turn into a standard practice week.

Saturday’s game will be the team’s first road test of the season, so the Gamecocks’ improved communication will be tested more than it has been in previous games when the game kicks off at 4 p.m. from Nashville.

“We need to communicate better,” Muschamp said. “We need to get the call. We need to relay the call throughout the entire defense. We work with crowd noise all the time, but it’s different on game day.”

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