South Carolina vs Ole Miss grades: Defense flops once more while Kevin Harris shines
South Carolina football traveled to Oxford, Mississippi for an SEC matchup against Ole Miss and lost, 59-42. Here’s how the Gamecocks graded out.
Passing offense
Collin Hill got the start under center after Will Muschamp opened up the QB competition during the week, and for the most part he rewarded his coaches’ faith with an efficient — if unspectacular — performance. He completed 17 of 28 passes for 230 yards and a touchdown, a lot of that coming in garbage time. He didn’t need to do much else beside hand the ball off to his running backs (more on that below).
But his mistakes, while rare, were costly. An early interception on a floated ball led to an Ole Miss touchdown, and he took a sack on a crucial third down in the fourth quarter to give the Rebels the ball back in a shootout. And when the Gamecocks had the ball, down 10 late and needing to score, he went 0 for 3 to turn the ball over on downs and seal the outcome.
Grade: C-
Rushing offense
Kevin Harris was bottled up for the first time all year last week against Texas A&M to the tune of just 39 yards — but he got right back to work Saturday against the SEC’s worst rushing defense, surpassing that total in the first quarter alone and putting together a record-breaking performance.
With 243 total yards and five touchdowns on 22 carries, Harris was simply phenomenal, rumbling through the Rebel defense as though it wasn’t there and breaking off six runs of 10 yards or more, including touchdown runs of 46 and 44 yards. Behind him, Deshaun Fenwick was effective as well, but it was Harris’ night to shine. He broke the program records for rushing yards in an SEC game and rushing touchdowns against any opponent.
Grade: A+
Passing defense
The Gamecock secondary lost starter Israel Mukuamu to injury early, and a couple other South Carolina rotation players were banged up. It likely wouldn’t have mattered, as Ole Miss starter Matt Corral looked unflappable and dominant. His 513 passing yards set a school record and were the most a Gamecock defense has ever surrendered to a QB in one game. His star target, wide receiver Elijah Moore, exploded for more than 200 yards, including 91 on a deep bomb where there wasn’t a Gamecock defender within sight, allowing him to waltz into the end zone.
Grade: F
Rushing defense
Ole Miss entered the game with the SEC’s top rushing offense by total yardage, but the Rebels had accomplished that by running the ball more than anyone else. And on Saturday, once again, they put up good totals with 168 yards on the ground, but it did take them 44 attempts to do it. That average of 3.8 yards per rush is far a better mark for South Carolina’s defense than the last two games, though they did fail to come up with stops on third and fourth downs and at the goal line.
Grade: C-
Special teams
There was extraordinarily little to write home about USC’s special teams unit — they got a trio of 20-yard kickoff returns and a couple of punts from Kai Kroeger, but other than that, they were completely sidelined in a back-and-forth slugfest.
Grade: Incomplete
Coaching
The coaching staff’s decision to stick with Collin Hill after re-opening the quarterback competition was curious, to say the least, but he didn’t do anything so egregious as to make them look utterly foolish for it. He didn’t exactly make them look like geniuses either.
Moral victories aren’t enough for Will Muschamp’s job security at this point. And while Saturday marked a far more competitive matchup than the previous two South Carolina games, it was still a loss — and a loss marked by historically bad defense, something that’s supposed to be Muschamp’s forte. Simply put, that unit has deteriorated to the point that 42 points from the offense wasn’t close to enough. That’s a stinging indictment of Muschamp’s program, no way around it.
Grade: D+
This story was originally published November 14, 2020 at 11:07 PM.
