The swagger is gone. South Carolina, which in recent years came to SEC media days oozing confidence, finds itself back in the position of the late 2000s: Under the radar, with its coach the main attraction, rather than a star player or two.
That’s what happens when you go 7-6, as the Gamecocks did last year, ending a run of three straight 11-win seasons. There was no Jadeveon Clowney proclaiming that other quarterbacks were afraid of him. There were a lot of questions about whether the program is back on the downward slope, and when coach Steve Spurrier might retire. And there was a general awareness that not much is expected of the Gamecocks this time around.
“We don’t expect any praise or publicity or anything like that,” linebacker Skai Moore said. “We’re just here to shock the world when we come into September.”
“(Spurrier) calls this talking season. People don’t expect us to do as well. He’s okay with that,” receiver Pharoh Cooper said. “Once you go out there and start coaching and playing all that sort of goes out the window.”
Last year South Carolina was picked to finish first in the SEC. It won’t be when the predictions come out later this week.
“The thing about it, what do those predictions really mean?” kicker Elliott Fry said. “I thought we were gonna be decent last year and we had a 7-6 season. You don’t know anything until the first game, or until the season. I think we were predicted to beat A&M last year and they killed us. It doesn’t really mean anything.”
The reasons for pessimism: Uncertainty at quarterback, only four offensive starters back, with tailback Mike Davis gone to the NFL, a defense that ranked 94th in the country last year, and a lack of star recruits to fill the void. Clowney, Marcus Lattimore, Connor Shaw and Stephon Gilmore are not walking through that door.
The reasons for optimism: Jon Hoke, a former NFL assistant, was brought in to fix the defense, and has infused a new “intensity,” according to Moore. Spurrier is still around to guide the offense. And all those close losses last year that, players say, easily could have been victories.
“We were a 10 or 11-win team, and that’s what we’re gonna try to do, have a big turnaround this year,” Cooper said. “We lost five games by less than a touchdown or a touchdown, in the fourth quarter while we were up. We know we have the potential to do that with our young team. We’re gonna go out there and make it right.”
Spurrier is known for zinging other teams when he thinks he has a good team that can back it up. So perhaps it’s notable that when given a chance to celebrate last year’s win over Georgia, he brushed it aside and changed subjects.
The closest Spurrier came to such a zinger was his quip that Arkansas and Tennessee also went 7-6 last year, “they’re sort of celebrating big seasons last year.” Rather than being a potshot at those teams, however, it also might have been Spurrier’s subtle reminder that his team was used to doing much better than 7-6.
“We’ve got some new defensive players. We’ll have a new quarterback. Got a lot of new players across the board,” Spurrier said. “But we’re hoping to return to where we were the prior three years, a top ten team. We believe we have a fighting chance to do that.”
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