There was a starkly different air about the Ol’ Ball Coach on Saturday, compared with so many other recent Georgia-South Carolina encounters.
Picture this if you can: Steve Spurrier, chastened.
For someone who has had such little practice at doing the whole humbled-loser thing — especially against the Bulldogs — he pulled it off surprisingly well.
With still more than two minutes left on the clock, Georgia’s Todd Gurley ran for one more first down. And Spurrier, without so much as a violent tug at his visor, made the universal gesture of surrender: He handed his headset to an assistant.
Then, as the darkness gathered around his Gamecocks and the Georgia celebration swelled, Spurrier did his congratulatory duties at midfield. He pivoted to his left looking for escape from the 41-30 loss. With a hitch in his step that reminds you he is, after all, 68 years old now, Spurrier left the stage as quickly as he could.
He came into this game actually claiming that Georgia fans have harbored no special animosity toward him since he moved to Columbia, S.C., nine years ago. If you are one of those distracted, forgiving souls, and wish not to revel in the man’s discomfort, no need to read further.
Of course, the truth is that Spurrier is less popular here than Tiger Woods would be at a Nordegren family reunion.
And should you remember the Spurrier who tormented Georgia while at Florida, who had won the past three seasons against the Bulldogs, who always has issued the loudest of the Gamecocks’ crows, you may find some satisfaction in the scene of his postgame news conference.
“It was a good tail-kicking. Give Georgia credit. They ran it right down our throat. Vince Dooley probably’s got a smile on his face the way they played today, no question about it,” Spurrier said, invoking the name of the Georgia coach most famous for the fundamentals of the ground game. He also was the Georgia coach who beat Florida in Spurrier’s 1966 senior season there, a loss that launched in him a permanently festering dislike of all things red and black.
On Saturday, Spurrier had a running back every bit as effective as the one responsible for beating Georgia the past three years, the departed Marcus Lattimore. Stephenson High graduate Mike Davis ran for 149 yards.
He had a quarterback capable of efficiently running his offense. Flowery Branch’s Connor Shaw ran for 75 yards and completed 64 percent of his passes for two touchdowns and no interceptions. (For a coach with a noted dislike of Georgia, he sure seems to enthusiastically recruit this state).
What Spurrier didn’t have was a defense that could convince Georgia to give him back the ball. He credited sources other than the quarterback and the running backs.
“Their offensive line answered the challenge. I guess their coaches challenged them after the Clemson game (a loss last week featuring porous line play). Their O-line obviously had a pretty good game,” Spurrier said.
He was left to answer why it was a couple of his defensive assistants who displayed the most fight Saturday — in the third quarter Kirk Botkin and Deke Adams had to be separated on the South Carolina sideline. “At least they cared,” Spurrier said.
This was the coach who once joked that it was good to play Georgia early in the season because “you could always count on them having two or three key players suspended.” On Saturday his defense had to do without starting cornerback Victor Hampton for the first half while he served a brief suspension.
The tricky coach was out-tricked: The Bulldogs recovered a first-quarter onside kick.
The offensive mastermind went one time too often to an option play that had worked earlier, but looked awfully dicey on the goal line. The play failed him on fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line, with the last quarter halfway spent and South Carolina down by 11.
“We didn’t score every possession, so we got beat,” Spurrier said. “Sometimes you have to score every possession, and we weren’t good enough to do it. They made a pretty good play down on the goal line. We thought we could run that option again, but we missed a guy (Georgia linebacker Amarlo Herrera), and he was waiting on Mike.”
More unfamiliar sounds of a chastened Spurrier, as rare as the call of the whooping crane:
“It was a tough day for all of us, for me, the defensive coaches.”
“Those three-and-out days (on defense), I’m hoping they come back sometime before the season is over. That would be helpful for our team. We have to be a little more creative on defense. We can’t sit there and never disguise and just say c’mon.”
“We’ll regroup, try to get ready for a good Vandy team and try to have some fun playing this game again.”
Spurrier came to Athens with a chance to become a singular Georgia slayer. His next victory over the Bulldogs, between his reigns at Florida and South Carolina, will be his 16th (he is now 15-6 lifetime). Nobody — not Bear Bryant, not General Neyland, nobody — has so many victories against Georgia. He did not have the opportunity to comment on that Saturday.
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