1984 team, 2012 Gamecocks have a lot in common

Carl Hill watched Saturday’s South Carolina-Georgia game from Memphis, where he was attending to family matters. Like most USC alumni, he was thrilled at the Gamecocks’ 35-7 romp, but when he heard that win was their 10th in a row dating to the 2011 season – erasing the previous school record of nine straight, set in 1984 – it set him to thinking.

Hill, a Columbia architect, was a freshman defensive end for USC in 1984 (and made Freshman All-American after that 10-2 season). So while he happily conceded his team’s best-in-school-history status after last fall’s team finished 11-2, he isn’t quite ready to let the win streak go.

“Our season, we won nine in a row in that season,” he said. “This team hasn’t done that yet. I want that (record) to go down, but it hasn’t yet.”

Understand, Hill and others from the Black Magic season aren’t jealous of the success of Steve Spurrier’s program. In fact, it would be hard to find a group more excited or chest-thumping proud of these Gamecocks, who rose this week to No. 3 in the nation – one spot shy of the 1984 team’s best ranking, No. 2, before losing to Navy.

Ask Mike Hold, one of two regulars at quarterback that year and now an athletics administrator at Newberry College. “Honestly, I could sit here and try to drum up comparisons, but these guys are so much bigger and stronger than we were,” he said.

“I’m proud to say I was part of the 1984 team, but this team is unbelievable. I see the resemblances in records and stats, but man-for-man, it’s puppies and dogs.”

Still, for those with memories stretching back 28 years, there are parallels. Hold, who came off the bench during that nine-game win streak in relief of USC’s starter, the late Allen Mitchell, says the biggest likeness is “the amount of enthusiasm going around.

“The crowd (at Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday) took me back to our game vs. Florida State,” a 38-26 victory watched by a then-sellout crowd of 75,000. Hold says that just as Saturday’s win over then-No. 5 Georgia was a benchmark for fans, “not until FSU (in 1984) did everyone throw in and say, ‘OK, I’m buying into this.’ ”

Running back Thomas Dendy, who led the 1984 team in rushing, and was inducted into USC’s Hall of Fame this year, sees familiar things in Marcus Lattimore. “Marcus has a little less speed (than Dendy did) and a lot more power, but I think we both had good vision, that sense of seeing holes and knowing you’ve got to hit them,” Dendy, now a pastor and a special education teacher at Greenville’s J.L. Mann High, said. “You don’t teach a running back that; it’s natural.

“The other similarity I see (on offense) is the quarterbacks as fighters, winners, great leaders. Mitchell and Hold did that. (Connor) Shaw is probably a better runner than those two, but Dylan (Thompson) comes in to throw, sort of like Hold did for us.”

Comparing the teams further, some offensive numbers are surprisingly close: the 1984 USC team averaged 33.8 points a game, this year’s team 34.0 through six games; both teams rolled up more than 400 yards per game; both featured strong running games, run-and-pass quarterbacks.

And while the current Gamecocks defense allows nearly 80 yards and a touchdown less per game than 1984’s “Fire Ants,” both were/are opportunistic. In 1984, linebacker James Seawright was the Jadeveon Clowney of his team, but as with the current crop, other players were capable of game-changing performances.

Say hello to Bryant Gilliard, USC’s star at free safety in 1984. Gilliard, now working for FedEx in New Jersey – he watched the Georgia game on TV, texting with Hill the entire time – picked off eight interceptions as a senior in 1984, four in the Florida State win. What his team lacked in pure stopping power, he said, they made up for with big plays.

“Yeah, definitely,” Gilliard said. “That was part of that ‘swarm’ mentality, hustling to get to the ball. That was a mindset we had every play, and these (USC) guys do a lot of that, too.

“Our defense didn’t have a lot of guys who were well known, and except for Clowney, neither do these guys. But what was and is most important is the excitement. We lived off that in 1984, practiced it in the summer and two-a-days; it became infectious. I see that now; when someone makes a play, they all congratulate him.”

It’s no surprise that the 1984 players feel a kinship to this year’s team. Former defensive back Otis Morris, part-owner of Pro Bowl Motors in Columbia, said he’s most impressed by “the way (the 2012 team) plays together. They just believe in the system and do what they need to do to win games.”

The 1984 players know the 2012 Gamecocks “are in the most competitive (conference) in America,” Gilliard said. “(But) they play with enthusiasm, and when you do that, it’s amazing what you can accomplish.”

Still, Hold says, there’s more to accomplish yet. That win streak, for example

“I don’t want to sound jealous but we’re going to hold onto ‘nine (straight) in a season’ for a little bit,” he said, laughing. “I hope they beat that.”

Added Dendy: “To me, we’re all in this together. We’re all the University of South Carolina. Records are made to be broken; we had it a long time, now it’s time for it to be broken.”

This story was originally published October 9, 2012 at 10:26 PM.