Thursday Night SEC Showdown: No. 4 Ole Miss at South Carolina

The Gamecocks registered a huge win for their program on Thursday night, which has some folks questioning how South Carolina could have lost to Georgia. Dawg Sports nips this emerging meme in the bud.

Team Speed Kills also has a superb review of the game, with particular attention paid to how Stephen Garcia, harried all night by an excellent Ole Miss pass rush, played the way Jevan Snead could not when the game was on the line: effectively, efficiently, and intelligently. Yes, those words associated with that Stephen Garcia. It’s like he’s growing up..right...in...front of your...eyes (/holds back tears)

SBN Ole Miss blog Red Cup Rebellion, however, has little but scorn for the offense and worse for Arkansas fans wanting to crow about their former coach’s most high-profile failure at his new gig. Do you like profanity, kids? Oh, there’s some over there if you really must have it.

Credit the South Carolina fans for getting ahead of the curve and do so boldly: they were chanting “o-ver-ra-ted” not at the end of the game. No, Gamecock fans, sitting on a mountainous 6-3 lead, went ahead and busted out a lusty chant of the four-beat classic as Ole Miss walked off the field at halftime.

It is both an indication of how awful Ole Miss looked on offense and how vicious the Gamecock defense was in reducing Jevan Snead’s Heisman launch party to a pile of smoking rubble. 9/21, 107 yards passing, one TD, and a rolling shambles of an o-line withering beneath the pressure of South Carolina DE Eric Norwood trashing blocking schemes singlehandedly.

After a night of near-perfect defensive anticipation, a quick collision in the defensive backfield gave Ole Miss their first offensive touchdown of the night — and, when you think about it, their first impressive pass play of the evening. About time.

Jevan Snead found Rebels wideout Markieth Summers wide open behind the Gamecock defense after safety Zo Winfield got tangled up with teammate Chris Culliver. Summers waltzed into the end zone for an easy score. The challenge now: Escaping Columbia alive, and with that No. 4 ranking intact.

Hey, a touchdown! After Jevan Snead’s disastrous fumble, South Carolina has put its 10th point on the scoreboard in the past three minutes. The Garcia pass to tight end Derek DiMarco gives the Gamecocks a 16-3 lead, and Ole Miss is official in trouble in Columbia.

What was that I was just saying about Ole Miss looking horrible? Let’s double down: Jevan Snead fumbled (confirmed via booth review) and South Carolina recovered on the Ole Miss 25. Let’s see if Carolina can actually get the ball across the goal line here.

Stephen Garcia completed a 69-yard pass to Gamecocks’ wide receiver Moe Brown, and all appeared peachy in the land of the Cocks. Alas, this game is still touchdown-less: South Carolina went three-and-out and settled for another field goal, making it 9-3. As Chris Fowler just said, despite a huge discrepancy in total yards (Carolina has 246 to Ole Miss’ 90) just can’t seem to pull away.

In the meantime, Ole Miss looks nothing like the No. 4 team in the country. This is just … ugh.

I know defensive battles can be just as complex as offensive shootouts, but the score makes this one pretty self-evident, right? Neither team is having an easy time moving the ball, for varying reasons: Ole Miss is killing itself with pass interference penalties, but it’s been solid otherwise; while the Ole Miss offense has failed to do anything creative or non-obvious with any of its chances. And so we have a 6-3 game. Pretty straightforward, right?

After a long punt return and a short drive, the Rebels missed on third down and settled for yet another field goal. Given that this game is tied at 3-3 with just five or so minutes left in the first half, that made sense. And then Houston Nutt decided to get all crazy — no jokes about his last name, you’ll notice, thank you very much — and fake the field goal. It didn’t go so well. Game’s still tied at 3-3. Whoops.

As always, join the live- and post-game coverage at Garnet And Black Attack and Red Cup Rebellion.

Until the :10 mark in the first quarter, South Carolina managed to hold the Ole Miss offense to a rather impressive scoreless 15 minutes. The only problem is that South Carolina failed to score a point themselves, thanks to a Stephen Garcia fumble deep in Ole Miss territory, which was recovered by the Rebels and converted into a field goal. And so they end the first period trailing by the third slimmest of margins (sorry), 3-0.

As always, join the live- and post-game coverage at Garnet And Black Attack and Red Cup Rebellion.

Dr. Saturday’s Matt Hinton is correct about this:

This is a true story. His real name is Bryce Sherman, he’s a former South Carolina sprinter, and he has one of those really awesome and borderline legendary high school football highlight reels. Fun stuff, all the way around.

Houston Nutt talked to a radio station in Charlotte about tonight’s game, and thanks to the folks at Sports Radio Interviews, we’ve got text from the interview:

The entire transcript is here.

It takes years of experience to properly understand what coaches are really saying in press conferences. It’s a code, and it requires a deft ear and a deep knowledge base of each coach’s special nuanced and individual language.

Thankfully, Red Cup Rebellion is here to help, this time in the case of what Steve Spurrier really means when he answers a question.

The offenses in this game might not be quite as strong as advertised. In any case, the setting will make it a good game, and while it may be Ole Miss’ first real test of the season, it’s one they should just barely pass, 28-24.

Read the full story at Team Speed Kills.

Red Cup Rebellion weighs in with a game prediction, forecasting a two-point road win tonight from the Rebels over the Gamecocks. South Carolina fans agree: it’ll be a two-point win... but for the home team.

Traditionalists may shun the practice, but the transformation of college football into a three- and sometimes four-day a week affair has been a boon for fans who want to watch as many games and teams as possible each week. The practice now well-established, ESPN’s Thursday night tussles between two teams from the MAC have given way to nationally relevant contests like last week’s Miami-Georgia Tech showdown and, this week, No. 4 Ole Miss (2-0) at South Carolina (2-1). Though tonight’s inter-conference game is this season’s only off-Saturday tussle between SEC teams, following the recently inked 15-year, $2 billion contract between ESPN and the SEC, it’s hard to imagine future years won’t be filled with more Thursday and Friday night SEC battles.

Casual fans just tuning into the college season may be surprised to see that No. 4 Associated Press ranking next to Ole Miss, but the Rebels were the poll’s No. 8 preseason team -- thanks to the return of 8 starters on each side of the ball from last year’s 9-4 team that thumped Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl -- sliding up the rankings with comfortable wins over Memphis (45-12) and Southeast Louisiana (52-6), while teams like Oklahoma State (loss vs Houston), USC (loss at Washington), Virginia Techh (loss to Alabama) and Oklahoma (loss to BYU) took a tumble.