Mississippi vs South Carolina: One minute left

Mississippi vs. South Carolina: One minute left

Ok, so I am blogging this on the idea that South Carolina wins this game 16-10, and a game that exposes a few things about both teams….

Wait, it’s official, the #4 team, Mississippi, loses to South Carolina 16-10.

So what have we learned? Several things.

First, we see that neither team has a really potent offense, but both have some pretty good defenses. For awhile we wondered if anybody was going to score a touchdown.

For South Carolina, the win is HUGE, but there are some very glaring problems with the offensive. The score should have been more like 28-10 instead of 16-10 because of their inability to get in the end zone. Folks, when you are first and goal, you simply MUST punch that in and cash in.

South Carolina failed to do that many times, either because they can’t run the ball or because Mississippi is good on defense. I think it’s a little of both, because last year South Carolina showed that they don’t run the ball all that well.

We also saw how Mississippi plays, and it seems that the hype about their quarterback seems to be just that…hype. Not that he did a terrible job, because every college quarterback is going to have off days, but the great ones have to be able to take the team on his shoulder and move forward…something the Rebels just were not able to do.

What we also saw was that South Carolina does not have the offense to finish an opponent, while Mississippi refused to give up, credit given to their defense. At one point the score was 16-3 and I remember saying to somebody that if South Carolina could get one more touchdown, they would ice the game…this was in the third quarter.

But was it me, or did it seem like South Carolina seemed to put it on “cruise control” after they scored 16 points? This is very unlike a Steve Spurrier coached team, who was well known for running up the scores while at Florida. It just seemed that this Gamecock team had just enough to win the game…no more than that.

Yet this also speaks of Mississippi, which some questioned the ranking at #4. To be sure, they benefited from other teams losing, allowing them to slide up the rankings, but in the end, they proved that they were not the 4th best team in the nation…not playing like that.

So Mississippi will drop in the polls, losing to an unranked team, one I feel they will see a few more times before the year is out. Let’s not forget that they did lose to South Carolina last year, and although they won a host of games late last year, the jury is still out on their greatness. As one guy on ESPN said, the last game Miss played against Texas Tech seemed to be one that was given to them. Some say that Texas Tech gave up on the game because they felt they should have gone to a bigger bowl…maybe there was some truth to it.

In any case, Mississippi is now off the ranks of the unbeaten, making room for other teams to take their place….could this be the beginning of a weekend of upsets? Or was it that South Carolina beating Mississippi was never an upset to begin with…

Time will tell. But for now, the final score rests at 16-10, South Carolina Gamecocks.