Gamecocks make quick work of golden eagl…
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Perhaps we never should read too much into one early season football game, but, boy oh boy, this much seems as perfectly clear as ESPN in flat-screen high-def: Either unranked South Carolina is really, really good and really underrated. Or Southern miss is really, really bad. Or maybe, considering the shellacking that took place, both. The Gamecocks, with three key starters sidelined apparently with eligibility issues, made short, efficient work of Southern miss here Thursday on the opening night of major college football. South Carolina led 7-3 after one quarter, 24-6 at halftime and coasted to a 41-13 victory. Steve Spurrier won his 20th consecutive season opener as a head coach, his sixth straight here. Meanwhile, third-year USM coach Larry Fedora has to figure out how to fix some things he thought were fixed. It didn’t take long for some of the same problems that plagued USM in 2009 to show up in 2010. first, the worst: The Golden Eagles still can’t tackle a quarterback. Didn’t seem to matter whether he was Gamecocks starter Stephen Garcia, true freshman Connor Shaw or cornerback-turned-quarterback Stephon Gilmore, USM couldn’t wrap him up. “We didn’t lose containment; we just couldn’t seem to get off of blocks,” Fedora said. “Obviously, their quarterbacks did a great job.” Obviously. Garcia, his receivers covered, took off on a 22-yard touchdown run for Carolina’s first touchdown. Garcia eluded USM’s pass rush, cut toward the right sideline and then ran through Eagle safety Justin Wilson at the 5-yard line. That pretty much became a theme. in the first half, alone, Garcia ran twice for 24 yards, Gilmore once for 14 and Shaw four times for 33. That’s slightly more than 10 yards per carry. Spurrier has never been known much for his running quarterbacks, but Spurrier always has been known to take what a team gives him. It probably didn’t take but a couple glances at the tape of last year’s new Orleans Bowl for Spurrier to work a running QB into his game plan. None of the three South Carolina quarterbacks will remind you of Middle Tennessee State’s super-elusive Dwight Dasher, but they were plenty elusive enough. (2 of 2) It wouldn’t be a Spurrier-coached game without a razzle-dazzle play or two.
The best of those was a 53-yard double reverse run by Ace Sanders that set up the Gamecocks’ second TD. Still can’t tackle Fedora confidently boasted in the off-season of an improved defense, featuring much more depth, both in the front seven and the secondary. to be sure, the Eagles shuffled more players in and out of the game, but the fresh ones didn’t tackle any better than the ones before them. Plus, USM’s defense didn’t get much help from its friends. The Eagles’ offense showed flashes of the up-tempo, spread-the-field attack Fedora has promised, but not nearly enough against Ellis Johnson’s talented and sound Carolina defense. Up-tempo is great when it works. But up-tempo really stresses a defense when it’s one-two-three, punt. USM’s first two possessions of the second half were just that – and took a grand total of 3 minutes off the clock. Just flat better Bottom line: South Carolina was just better, far better, at the line of scrimmage and on the flanks. Keep in mind this was a Gamecocks team playing without its star tight end Weslye Saunders, its starting left tackle Jarriel King and its star cornerback Chris Culliver, all out because of NCAA issues. An SEC official said South Carolina wasn’t told by the NCAA to hold King and Culliver out until Thursday afternoon. If their absence had any effect whatsoever on their Gamecocks teammates, it wasn’t apparent. South Carolina simply did what it wanted, when it wanted, pretty much as often as Spurrier wanted to do it. Well, not all he wanted to do. “We wanted to get 50,” Spurrier said. “We need to score 50 one of these times.” Spurrier has strongly suggested this is his strongest South Carolina team, a team he believes can challenge in the SEC East. We’ll learn a lot more about that when the Gamecocks play host to Georgia here a week from Saturday. Fedora believes this is his deepest and best USM team, a team that will challenge for the Conference USA championship. That may be, but you couldn’t tell it Thursday night when a nation of college football fans was watching – at least until they turned the channel or fell asleep sometime during the third quarter. For USM fans, even a nightmare would be better. “Everybody kind of went to sleep in the second half, including me almost,” Spurrier said. Gamecocks make quick work of Golden Eagles in opener