Home heartbreaker: South Carolina can’t complete upset of No. 4 Alabama
Fifteen years ago, the night before South Carolina produced the most-improbable win in school history over No. 1 Alabama, then-coach Steve Spurrier made his team watch a movie.
The choice was “Secretariat,” a film about the greatest horse that ever lived. The horses that run their race, Spurrier told them, they only see straight. Keep your head forward and give fate a chance.
A decade and a half later, South Carolina ran its race again against Alabama. But on this day, the Gamecocks lost by a nose.
As students packed themselves near the bottom of the student section, readying for a field storming, the clock at Williams-Brice Stadium hit zero. The scoreboard read: Alabama 29, South Carolina 22.
“Obviously a gut-wrenching loss, to say the least,” USC coach Shane Beamer said. “We didn’t finish and they did.”
And forgive those who walked out of the stadium, looking back at the scoreboard wondering, “How on Earth did this happen?”
The Gamecocks were up eight points late in the fourth quarter (up 22-15) before a 14-play Alabama drive tied the game. But even then, hope was flowing.
South Carolina had the ball with just over two minutes left, which just felt ripe for a miracle ending. Quarterback LaNorris Sellers — playing his best game since he willed the Gamecocks to a win over Clemson last season — was surely going to drive his team down the field to knock off No. 4 Alabama.
And then, on the second play of that drive, Sellers ran up the middle and fumbled. The Crimson Tide recovered the ball 38 yards from the end zone.
“I had two hands on it and I’m thinking the ref is going to blow the whistle,” Sellers said. “As I started to fall down, while I was trying to catch myself. That’s when I took my right hand off and that’s when they got under it.”
It took five plays for the Crimson Tide to rip the hearts and hope out of every South Carolina fan. On 3rd and 10, wide receiver Germie Bernard faked an end-around, running 25 yards down the sideline for a touchdown. Safety DQ Smith could’ve pushed him out of bounds before the end zone but — with USC out of timeouts — he was instructed by the coaching staff to let Alabama score if the play went past the first-down marker.
Alabama scored 15 points in 102 seconds and won the game.
It’s a devastating way for this South Carolina team (3-5, 1-5 SEC) to lose ... and, yet, there were encouraging signs.
After the Gamecocks lost by 19 to Oklahoma, the outside noise grew to deafening levels about the future of offensive coordinator Mike Shula.
There was no evidence a near-upset was on the horizon. The Gamecocks entered the game with the worst offense in the SEC, so putrid that students organized a “protest” on Wednesday demanding Shula be fired.
Three days later, the South Carolina students rushed to the bottom of the stairs, waiting to leap over Williams-Brice Stadium’s beautiful Ligustrum hedges and storm the field. Instead, they walked out of the stadium as Alabama celebrated.
Despite all that, it is still hard to wrap your head around this: How did South Carolina not pull out a win?
Sure, Sellers threw one of the ugliest pick-sixes you’ll ever see? And the Gamecocks ran for just 28 yards in the first half. And they kicked field goals on their first two red-zone trips.
But the much-maligned offensive line played its best game of the year, only allowing two sacks and keeping the pocket relatively clean for Sellers. The offense playbook, which Beamer noted was simplified, included plays to move the pocket and get Sellers throwing on the run. And the South Carolina defense, until the fourth quarter, met the moment.
They allowed just 72 rushing yards while forcing Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson (24 of 43, 253 yards and 2 TDs) into his worst game in two months. Until its final two drives, Alabama had managed just one first down in the second half.
“We didn’t do anything different defensively,” Beamer said. “We wanted to heat (Simpson) up a lot and put pressure on him and stop the run. And we did that.”
And, yet, it wasn’t enough.
“We need to finish in the fourth quarter when you’ve got an eight-point lead at home and you’ve got a team on the ropes. You’ve got to put them away,” Beamer said. “And we didn’t.”
Next South Carolina football game
- Who: South Carolina at Ole Miss
- When: 7 p.m. Saturday
- Where: Vaught Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Miss.
- Watch: ESPN
This story was originally published October 25, 2025 at 7:22 PM.
