Clemson at South Carolina Post-Game: Gamecocks Dominate Clemson, Win 34-13

"This summer, Boyd decided to Tweet after South Carolina quarterbacks coach G.A. Mangus was arrested in Greenville for urinating in public. “Like coach, like QB, smh (shaking my head),” Boyd tweeted, referring to Gamecocks quarterback Steven Garcia’s five suspensions.

Whose shaking his head now, Tajh?

I realized today that this is gonna be the last Carolina game I see while Down Under (exchange program from law school), as I come home in two weeks. But it’s been fun, and I think that I’ve encouraged at least a bit more interest in college football around here. (I think the sports transfer has been much greater the other way, as I’ve fallen in love with Aussie Rules Football. Cricket is still confusing as heck though.)

The Good

The Offense: Spurrier finally buckled down and ran the option for pretty much the entire game, which is where we’d gotten a lot of success against Florida and others this year. And it paid off. Carolina ran through Clemson’s line like tissue paper. Connor Shaw had a banner night; not only did he look quite confident in the backfield, he finally figured out when to scramble and when to throw it away (mostly). While it looked for a bit like we’d completely abandonded the pass (the second quarter was almost all running), Shaw still threw several good passes thrown into the mix. Running certainly seems to be both the main strength and main tool of our offense right now. The touchdowns to Rory Anderson and Alshon Jeffery in the second half were both great throws, as was the 55-yard bomb to Anderson shortly beforehand. When Shaw and has recievers finally sync up, either in the bowl game or next year, watch out.

There were problems on offense; the O-line still looked shaky at times (especially on that first sack of Garcia; two guys completely missed the blitzing defender). But the good far outweighed the bad tonight.

The Defense: What is there to say except “wow”? How soft is this D-line now, Boyd? Four sacks, and tons of pressure all night long. Clemson couldn’t seem to stick with a combination of short passes and short runs, which have been effective against our defense all year; they kept switching back to ineffective deep bombs, and a combination of great coverage and dropped balls negated most of those plays. Two of Clemson’s scores came with assists; the first was a drive resulting from an extremely questionable penalty while the second came from a botched punt, and it was nothing short of a miracle that the defense held Clemson to a FG after starting on Carolina’s 26. Well done.

The Bad

Special Teams. The second-quarter snafu which resulted in Clemson starting from their own 26 was just plain bad. Bad snap, bad attempt at fixing it by Scribner-Howard, and bad play after it got blocked. Andre Ellington also broke a 55-yard return on the special teams, and if he’d broken that last tackle it could have been much much worse. And while the fair catch snafu was not exactly Carolina’s fault, there were way too many players around Hopkins; no need for that when he’s signaling fair catch. Field goals were fine, but we have got to make some serious adjustments to the special teams next year.

The Ugly

The referees. Awful, awful, awful. The aforementioned fair catch snafu was one of the most blatantly wrong calls I’ve seen all year long. Hopkins was hit by a Clemson player, not a Carolina player. It was clearly from most every review angle, and should have been clear to the refs. The refs continued to ignore several holding and facemask penalties (including two three plays apart on Kenny Miles) while calling several penalties on the Gamecocks. The second half finally saw them take the blinders off and begin calling penalties on Clemson but it was not good.

The Upshot

But let’s not let these stupid refs ruin the mood. Carolina has 10 wins for the second time in school history. We defeated the entire SEC East this year and have defeated (and, in fact, dominated) Clemson three times in a row. We defeated Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee in back-to-back years. We have one of the best defenses in the country. We did all of this without Lattimore for half the season, without our senior quarterback for most of the season, and with a very shaky offensive line. This, in my opinion, is one of Steve Spurrier’s best coaching years ever, right up there with the 1995 & 1996 Gators.