‘Nobody wants to go home’ after Clemson: Urgency hits new levels for Gamecock players
For nearly two months now, South Carolina football players and coaches have talked about feelings of urgency and desperation when it comes to the 2019 season.
This week against Texas A&M, though, marks in many ways the most desperate moment yet. A loss would mean the end of the Gamecocks’ undeniably slim bowl hopes. A win would set them up for the ultimate gut check matchup against Clemson with a bowl game in the balance.
These next weeks have the potential to make or break the season and coach Will Muschamp’s entire tenure. Salvaging a bowl game would give the entire program a huge boost in momentum, but losing both contests could cost people their jobs and send the seniors off in dispiriting fashion.
“We’ve talked about it,” sophomore linebacker Ernest Jones, one of the defense’s most vocal leaders, said of the situation. “Nobody wants to go home after the Clemson game, not at all. Things haven’t worked right now. And it’s obvious we’re upset. I don’t believe anybody’s down on themselves, but there’s a sense of we could have done some things better. But with these next two games, we just got to take it week after week, and it’ll be a great thing to go out, beat Texas A&M, have a bye week, then go out and beat Clemson and go to a bowl game.”
Outside the program, there’s almost no optimism the Gamecocks can pull that off. ESPN’s Power Football Index gives Carolina just a 22.1% chance of beating A&M and an 8.9% chance of beating Clemson. Combined, it projects South Carolina to have just a 2% chance of winning out.
“I haven’t addressed that,” Muschamp said when asked about a potential bowl game. “I address each week as a season, and it’s Texas A&M and it’s focusing on our football team and Texas A&M and that’s it. So that’s what we need to be focused in on.”
But junior linebacker Sherrod Greene echoed Jones in saying that the next two weeks as a whole and the goal of a bowl game have been discussed among the players.
“That’s the plan, we know we have to win the next two games ... to have a bowl game. That’s our goal as a defense. The season didn’t go the way that we wanted it to. So all we can do now is handle what’s in the present,” Greene said.
The national bowl projections have left USC behind. The sportsbooks are picking Texas A&M and Clemson to both win by double digits. And statistical models like Bill Connelly’s SP+ ratings and Sports Reference’s SRS like the Aggies and Tigers far better than the Gamecocks.
So what gives South Carolina belief that it can pull off two upsets in a row, despite a season of inconsistent and frustrating play?
“It’s just a period in our time where everything’s not going well for us right now, so you gotta keep going. Any given week it could be your week, it could be the opponent’s week,” Jones said. “And if we sit here and continue to dwell on the six games we’ve dropped, then you look up and you’ve lost two more. So personally I’m not thinking about the past six losses, I’m focused on Texas A&M and doing everything I can in my ability to get those seniors to a bowl game.”
The motivation to send the seniors, Muschamp’s first full recruiting class, out on a high note, is a big one, Jones said, especially against Texas A&M and Clemson.
“I don’t know if these seniors have ever beat both these teams. So what a way to go out would be beating two teams you never beat before,” he said.
For the seniors themselves, who have been living with this desperation for a while now as the end of their college careers gets closer and closer, nothing much will change these next few weeks.
“I feel you gotta have a sense of urgency in everything you do around here, that’s just kind of what we go by. So I don’t change what I do from week to week, it’s the same mentality week in and week out, and that’s what keeps you playing consistent,” wide receiver Bryan Edwards said.
This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 8:15 AM.
