How South Carolina’s bad loss can help the Gamecocks this week

The South Carolina football team has plenty of mantras to put the best behind it.

Each week, they say, is its own season. They flush the bad, and often the good, because each game is its own challenge. The players can neither rest on laurels, or dwell on failures.

So it stands the Week 2 loss to Georgia looms larger to those outside the program than inside. But the loss in a much-hyped game at Williams-Brice Stadium offers the Gamecocks different lessons as they look toward another showdown with a ranked foe.

“The biggest thing is it’s a four-quarter game,” quarterback Jake Bentley said. “It’s going to be a four-quarter game Saturday.

“You’ve got to keep playing, no matter what the score is or what happened before. Focus on the next play.”

The Gamecocks will visit No. 17 Kentucky, their second ranked opponent in four games. They’ll be in a hyped-up atmosphere with a sold-out crowd against an SEC East opponent.

The game in some ways could take on a bigger stage, if they let it.

“You can’t make games bigger than what they are,” linebacker/defensive end Bryson Allen-Williams said. “You’ve got to approach games the same way. You can’t come out flat against good teams. You’ve got to go punch someone in the mouth first.

“They’re not going to lay down for us.”

A season ago, the Gamecocks came home to face Kentucky after two big wins to start the year. With a raucous home crowd, they took a mighty first punch, and then squandered it.

A quick burst followed by going flat. Kentucky didn’t lay down, and a forceful defense, perhaps a preview of the current dominant unit, kept USC at bay all night.

The Gamecocks will have to deal with that crowd, a good team, a trash-talking running back and plenty of other challenges. Their first road trip, to Vanderbilt, had more USC fans in the stands than home fans, so this at least will be different.

And in a game with stakes that suddenly seem higher, one more lesson emerges from the up-and-down blowout loss a few weeks prior, which got away from USC in the third quarter.

“We’ve just got to stay composed, just do what we do, stay violent, composed,” center Donell Stanley said. “That’s what coach talks about all the time. That’s what we’ve got to come into this game as.”

This story was originally published September 27, 2018 at 1:34 PM.