Some quick, barely researched, not fully formed thoughts from South Carolina’s 37-14 victory over Vanderbilt.

TCB. Listen, we don’t always win SEC games on the road by three touchdowns, so I can understand Gamecock fans being excited about and re-energized by yesterday’s win. Clinging to a slim six point lead at the intermission, South Carolina dominated the game in the second half, finishing with more than 500 total yards and holding Vanderbilt below 300. The game was far from clean, and we left a minimum of 14 points on the field, but all in all it was a nice bounce back from the thrashing we took at home against Georgia.

That said, I would describe the win as nothing more than “fine”. In the grand scheme of things, Vanderbilt is still Vanderbilt. Sure, they should’ve beaten Notre Dame at South Bend last weekend, and the entire ESPN College GameDay crew picked them to beat us. But the reaction nationally to our win was…well, there was no reaction. Nobody saw that score crawl across that screen and thought “wowwww, South Carolina is back baby!”

No, it wasn’t that. But it was a win that was vital more because a loss would’ve been devastating to the long-term outlook of this team and this season. Saturday in Nashville was nice, but at the end of the day it was nothing more than USC taking care of business, and we should all be grateful for that.

Keeping it 100. Rico Dowdle rushed for 112 yards and Shi Smith had 119 yards receiving, making them the first RB/WR duo to pull of that feat in the same game since the 2016 Missouri game (h/t @KershawsCorner).

Dowdle once again looked like himself after being bottled up and stone-handed in the UGA game. He benefited from a tremendous effort by the Gamecock offensive line, who looked as good in the run game as we’ve seen in a couple of years. Vandy killer AJ Turner and Ty’Son Williams added 64 and 48 yards respectfully, as USC put up a season high 273 rushing yards. Oh yeah Mon Denson also added a touchdown.

Shi Smith, meanwhile, has now led the Gamecocks in receiving in two of the three games this year, with a bizarre game in between where he was only targeted twice for 11 yards. It looks as if Bryan McClendon is set on using Deebo Samuel as more of a Swiss Army Knife in the offense, with pop passes, sweeps and shorter routes to get him in space. That leaves Smith and Bryan Edwards to take the lid off over the top, which they’ve both done at different times this season. Even with the possible loss of OrTre Smith to a knee injury, defenses are going to be forced to pick a poison when defending the Gamecock passing game this season.

Read and right. Jake Bentley had another solid game (19-28, 261, 1 TD, 1 INT) leading the offense. His accuracy is continuing to improve, and his deep ball touch seems to be coming along.

Bentley still needs to find a way to cut down on tipped passes and do a better job recognizing his backs in the flat. One tipped pass led to an interception and eventually points for Vandy as he failed to recognize a DE dropping into coverage. Other tipped passes are not 100% his fault as there are techniques in pass blocking that help keep defensive linemen’s hands down, but ultimately it’s up to Jake to get the ball through the lane uncontested.

As far as the backs in the flat, I’ve never seen defenses give up the RB so much space as I’ve seen in games (all games, not just USC games) this season. Getting the ball to a back one on one with a linebacker seems to be a guaranteed six yards these days.

Pace maker. Bryan McClendon has kept good on his promise to speed up the South Carolina offense. At the same time it’s a smart pace, not going fast just for the sake of going fast, and has yielded very nice results in our two wins this year. My only real complaint yesterday was throwing the ball four times after having separate 2nd-and-shorts in Vandy territory, including back-to-back low percentage fades when we had the Commodores on their heels. Run the dang ball BMac.

The Mountain. This pretty much speaks for itself, and Javon Kinlaw stands to make a lot of money next April.

Fenton Island and the Horn of Columbia. Rashad Fenton picked up his second interception of the season against Vanderbilt, and I literally did not hear the name Jaycee Horn mentioned yesterday. You know how good that is? You don’t think coordinators like to see freshmen DB’s covering their WR’s? Not these guys, they are rarely testing Mr. Horn and that speaks volumes.

BAWlin. Bryson Allen-Williams is a damn good Gamecock, and I’m glad to see him back and contributing. He was arguably the second most dominant defensive player on the field yesterday.

Cat Nip. It’s really hard to explain how Kentucky currently has a four game winning streak over South Carolina. But a few years ago it was just as hard to explain how South Carolina had a TEN game winning streak over Kentucky. That’s not a shot at either program, we’re just two middle of the road SEC football programs trying to get to that next level, right? How can one team dominate the other for such a long stretch? I don’t know the answer, football can be a strange game is all I can come up with.

That said, when I was watching Kentucky drill Mississippi State last night, I actually started to feel better about our game. The hype is on the other foot now (despite Vegas making us an early favorite how in the world) and Kentucky will come in as the ranked team with a lot of momentum on their side. We’ll have the chance to knock them off their pedestal, much like we did in 2007 when we beat the 8th-ranked ‘Cats 38-23.

I can promise you this Kentucky team is no Vandy. They are tough and confident, and have an all-American running back in Bennie Snell. It will take our best shot.

I’m ready. Go Cocks.

Some quick, barely researched, not fully formed thoughts from South Carolina’s 41-17 loss to Georgia.

Chasers. When we woke up on November 29, 2015, Kirby Smart was the odds on favorite to become the next head football coach at the University of South Carolina. Athletic Director Ray Tanner had courted Houston’s Tom Herman, reportedly come to an agreement in principle, and then was turned down. Smart, the defensive coordinator at Alabama under Nick Saban for eight years, was the next logical choice. He was interested in becoming a head coach, and it seemed like a matter of time before he would be introduced in Columbia.

By the end of that day things had changed dramatically. Mark Richt was fired by Georgia, fresh off a 9-win regular season. The Bulldog brass were frustrated with the lack of championships despite Richt consistently keeping Georgia among the top 10-15 teams in the country and winning five SEC East titles and two SEC championships. It was clear when they fired Richt they had only one coach in mind to run their program – Kirby Smart.

It was an easy decision for Smart to return to his alma mater and take over a 10-win team with more than enough talent to compete in the SEC. South Carolina hired Will Muschamp a short time later.

I bring this up not to say we’d be better off with Smart than we would Muschamp, there’s no way to know that. No matter who took over at South Carolina, he was going to have a significant uphill battle, and Muschamp has done a more than adequate job to this point. I bring this up because it appears for the first time in 30+ years Georgia has the right man at the helm of their program, and that’s terrible news for South Carolina.

Georgia has had everything in place for years to be an ultra elite program but has been unable to put it together consistently on Saturdays. With Smart at the helm their recruiting, which was excellent to begin with, has gotten better and their play on the field finally looks like that of a consistent SEC and national championship contender.

Let me put it this way – Will Muschamp took a 3-9 Gamecock team to six wins in his first year, nine wins in his second year, and has vastly improved recruiting and the overall culture around the program. And during that period we LOST significant ground to Georgia.

I have no idea what the answer is now that the sleeping giant in Athens has been awakened. I sure hope Will Muschamp does.

Whipped. The first half of yesterday’s game was somewhat encouraging, and was pretty close to what I expected to see from the two teams. It was clear that Georgia was the more talented team, but aside from a flukey pick six and a shanked punt the Gamecocks had scrapped their way to a pretty even game.

The second half was a completely different story, and is what you often see when a supremely talented team go up against an average team. The average team can scratch and claw to keep the game close, but eventually talent and depth is going to take over. That’s exactly what happened as Georgia carved up the Gamecocks on their first three drives of the second half,  covering 75, 75 and 86 yards in a display of brute force and lightning speed.

On that second 75-yard drive it was clear the Gamecock defense was whipped. I saw quite a few people on Twitter use the word “quit”, which is a really lazy and disrespectful take unless you’ve had experience with 6’6″, 330 lb. offensive linemen shoving you around for 60 minutes. Our guys were still playing hard, they were just physically and mentally beaten.

Speed Kills. Georgia’s first touchdown of the second half was a great example of the talent discrepancy between the two teams. Mecole Hardman, a former 5-star recruit, took a simple swing pass that put him one-on-one with former walk-on Steven Montac. Montac didn’t take a great angle to begin with, but still had a chance to at least draw even with Hardman and push him out of bounds. Instead, Hardman turned on the jets and blew by Montac, shedding his attempted tackle and cruising in for the back breaking TD.

Gameplanning. Opening the first two series going empty backfield and no huddle was a very strange decision. Also, it was obvious we were hell bent on getting Deebo the ball, while Georgia was hell bent on letting anyone but him beat them. We waited way too long to start trying our other options. We have too many offensive weapons to focus so much on just one.

Bentley Takes. Hoo boy the Jake Bentley takes over the last 24 hours. The one I probably agreed with the most was the most basic:

It’s not the way we want to describe our QB after 22 games as the starter, but it’s hard to argue otherwise. He’s not awful, but he’s also not a guy you can trust to put the offense on his back and lead to victory against a good defense. He’ll make some great throws (touchdown to Edwards yesterday) but he’ll also make some mind-numbing decisions (pick six against Clemson last year).

I get the “wasn’t his fault” arguments, there are definitely some of those. But you can’t point to very many big game performances that make you confident that he’s going to have more big game performances. After 22 college games you usually know what your guy is, and for Bentley that is average. I’ll give you slightly above average if you push me.

He can certainly improve, and he’s easily the best we’ve got. But for this team to exceed expectations, Bentley has to start to exceed personal expectations.

Hype. Let me make one thing clear – nothing the South Carolina media team does has any impact on the football team’s performance on the field. That said, until we start winning some of these big games I’d like to see us tone down some of these over-the-top uniform reveal and hype videos. It’s borderline embarrassing when you have a day like yesterday.

Also, no script helmets for a while. Bad memories.

What’s Next. Our chance to win the SEC East is gone, and in retrospect never really existed in the first place. I believe we can still win eight, maybe nine games if we can not let yesterday’s game beat us twice. That game needs to be flushed, and we need a good performance against Marshall to re-instill some confidence.

Clemson is a loss, don’t @ me. Besides that we have a couple of wins on our schedule and a whole bunch of toss-ups. Buckle in. Hopefully we won’t have any more performances like yesterday in our bag.

Go Cocks.

Guess who’s back? That’s right, TRC Unleashed but minus Tbone and the Gman. Tbone is on permanent vacation, while Gman was pushed to a third set tiebreaker in his senior league tennis match last night and couldn’t make it.

Thankfully Connor Tapp from 247Sports was able to fill in to review the opener against Coastal Carolina and preview the upcoming tilt against Georgia. Take a listen, we think you’ll enjoy all the hot takes and breaking down of things.

Link to iTunes here, or stream below, and enjoy!

 

Some quick, barely researched, not fully formed thoughts from South Carolina’s 49-15 season opening win over Coastal Carolina.

Beached. It’s a running, unfunny joke among South Carolina fans how we struggle to dominate “paycheck” games against teams like Wofford, Furman, Western Carolina and the like. The lone exception appears to be Coastal Carolina, whom we have now beaten 119-25 in two lifetime meetings after today’s victory. It’s nice to be able to relax in the second half of games and get the backups and their backups some live snaps. We all need more Coastal Carolinas in our lives.

McOffense. The focus was definitely on coordinator Bryan McClendon and the new-look Gamecock offense, and they didn’t disappoint. USC was crisp and sharp, and McClendon’s play calling played to our strengths and utilized just about all of the skill talent we have. The 49 points were the most in the Will Muschamp era, and the 557 yards were the second most.

We can debate how much of the playbook we showed, or if we held back on the offensive tempo, but one thing is for sure – this looks a hell of a lot better than Kurt Roper’s offenses so far.

Subdued. Nobody is really talking about it, but Jake Bentley looked like a different guy today. Statistically he had perhaps the best day of his career – 22/29, 250 yards, 4 TD and 0 INT. But the really encouraging sign is he seemed emotionally under control the entire time he was in there. One of the knocks on him in his first two years was he came out too amped up and he often missed easy throws, especially early in games. But today he looked calm and relaxed from the opening bell, and his play reflected that. Maybe he’s matured. Or maybe it’s his new haircut.

Oh snap. On the down side, the slow and low shotgun snaps from Donnell Stanley were noticeable in the first series of the game, and they never got any better. With the game out of hand, backup center Chandler Farrell came in and his snaps were much better. Problem is he’s not nearly the blocker Stanley is.

After the game Muschamp said it was something they noticed and would work to get corrected. My question is, has he been snapping like this in practice? And if so why has it not already been corrected?

Scripted. The helmets were badass.

Doppelgänger. Some guy who looks just like Will Muschamp went for it on two fourth downs in one series this afternoon. One was on OUR SIDE of the field. The real Will Muschamp is going to be pissed when he finds out.

Welcome back. Deebo Samuel and Rico Dowdle both missed large parts of the 2017 season with broken fibulas. Both returned with a vengeance today. Deebo had more than 100 total yards from scrimmage and a highlight-reel, one-handed touchdown catch. Rico rushed for 105 yards and had one rushing and one receiving touchdown, and looked trimmer and quicker than he was last year.

Other stars. As mentioned above, it’s a really good thing to run a lot of plays, because we have a ton of playmakers. Shi Smith, Bryan Edwards, Ty’Son Williams, Kiel Pollard, Randrecous Davis and Slade Carroll (!) all had noteworthy moments today. Also worth mentioning, the second team offensive line looked really, really good.

No name defense. The defense was solid today, holding Coastal to 238 yards. But no players really stood out after DJ Wonnum went down with an ankle injury. Particularly in the secondary, we have a lot of guys who are a lot of shapes and sizes and seem to move easily from corner to nickel to safety and back with ease. The d-line and linebackers were heavily rotated today. It will be interesting to see who makes it into the primary rotation as we move into SEC play.

Firsts. There were quite a few firsts today – freshman Jaycee Horn had his first career sack on a corner blitz. Pollard and Davis had the first touchdown catches of their respective careers. Twelfth year senior Michael Scarnecchia also had his first touchdown pass.

Hell on earth. I was watching from the comfort of my home, but it sounds like today was one of the hottest home games anyone can remember. Saturday games in Columbia at noon in September should be outlawed. I know we’re at the mercy of the TV schedule, but Ray Tanner needs to put up a fight to prevent it from happening again, for the safety of our fans.

Tom Tom. Elsewhere, almost former Gamecock head coach Tom Herman and his Texas Longhorns lost their opener to Maryland for the second consecutive year. Remember when everyone was so upset at Phil Kornblut because they thought he cost us our shot at Herman? I tell you what, people who believed that should be sending Korn thank you notes today.

Go Cocks, beat Georgia.