Beating Clemson was nice and all, but that was Clemson, which can fold under duress like no other Top 25 program, and the game was in Athens. And it wasn’t, not to put too fine a point on it, an SEC game.
This was quarterback Hutson Mason’s first start in an opposing conference outpost, and it was defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt’s first test against an SEC team since … well, since Jan. 6 against Auburn with the BCS title on the line. But again: That was in the Rose Bowl, not in Jordan-Hare Stadium, and on that night Pruitt had Florida State’s mighty defenders at his disposal.
What happened here Saturday can be deemed Pruitt’s “welcome-to-the-SEC” moment as a defensive coordinator, and for his new employer it was also a cold slap of reality. The Georgia Bulldogs were ascendant after their runaway second half against Clemson — being tabbed by Kirk Herbstreit as the nation’s best team; tailback Todd Gurley being anointed by Bovada as the Heisman Trophy favorite — but there was about this rush of acclaim more than a hint of fool’s gold.
And who better to make Georgia look foolish than Steve Spurrier, the bane of Bulldogs for more than two decades? Spurrier’s touted team had been lucky to escape its two games 1-1. South Carolina was routed by Texas A&M and had to rally to subdue East Carolina, and the smart folks in Las Vegas who projected the Gamecocks as a 3-point favorite over Georgia before the season commenced recalibrated: The visitors entered favored by a touchdown. They exited 38-35 losers.
“Some wins are better than others,” Spurrier said. “I think this one was better than most others.”
It was something of a set-up game — desperate South Carolina playing at home against Georgia, which hadn’t won here since 2008 and had gone two weeks being serenaded by sweet songs of its sudden grandeur. The surprise wasn’t that the Bulldogs were played off their feet for much of Saturday’s game; the surprise was that they hung tough enough to have a shot at the end.
South Carolina gained more yards (298) against the Bulldogs in two quarters than Clemson (291) had in four. Georgia was doing well enough against the run, but Dylan Thompson’s passing left Georgia flummoxed. For long moments, it appeared Pruitt had adopted Cover-None as his base defense.
“Part of the problem was we didn’t much pressure on the quarterback,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “We didn’t even squeeze the pocket as far I could see.”
South Carolina scored first and last in the first half and twice more in between. Under Pruitt, the Bulldogs have yielded 45 first-half points. The difference this night was that the Gamecocks kept scoring after halftime; Clemson was summarily halted. (We say once more: That was Clemson.)
Spurrier and Thompson were undressing Georgia’s secondary, the weakest part of an otherwise solid defense. But that front seven could put little pressure on the South Carolina quarterback, and that left the defensive backfield to its own devices. At halftime the Gamecocks had passed for 240 yards and three touchdowns.
Georgia’s raging offense kept it close. By his exalted standards, Gurley started slowly. (He did have a touchdown run negated by penalty.) He took to rumbling in the second half, with two jaunts — a third-down cutback and a pinballing 9-yard gain — of the sort the great Herschel would have been proud to call his own.
Down 24-13 at the half, Georgia kept pressuring the Gamecocks to score and hold serve. In the fourth quarter, South Carolina blinked. Damian Swann intercepted Thompson’s pass and left Georgia in point-blank range of a go-ahead touchdown. But Mason was called for intentional grounding on first down — he faked to Gurley and rolled right — and had a pass batted down on third. (Richt would say of the first-down call: “If I had it to do again, I’d have hammered it.”)
Enter Marshall Morgan, who in the first half established an SEC record by making his 20th consecutive field goal, but who missed late in the half. With a chance to tie the score with 4:34 remaining, Morgan pushed his 28-yarder wide right.
“No matter what happened throughout the day,” Richt said, “that was a moment where we had, at worst, a chance to tie up. It’s one of the things that got us.”
It came down to fourth-and-inches at midfield. Spurrier went for it, as you knew he would, and Thompson made it, if only just. The measurement was so close that both teams claimed success, but after a lengthy bit of surveying referee Hubert Owens pointed the Gamecocks’ way. It was over. Kirk Herbstreit’s No. 1 team was 1-1. And 0-1 in the SEC.
