Top 10 Steve Spurrier wins as Gamecock coach

The Gamecocks beat a top-ranked team for the first time in their football history before a jubilant home crowd to set in motion the program’s greatest two-year stretch. It also signaled that Steve Spurrier was closing the talent gap with the dominant conference teams. Freshman tailback Marcus Lattimore scored three touchdowns and sophomore receiver Alshon Jeffery scored the other two on passes from Stephen Garcia. Jeffery also had a key highlight-reel, one-handed catch against the Tide.

The Capital One Bowl victory in Orlando, Fla., over traditional power Nebraska capped the best season in the program’s long history, as the Gamecocks won 11 games for the first time. Jeffery’s 51-yard touchdown reception on the final play of the first half gave USC a lead it wouldn’t relinquish and proved to be the final catch of his college career. The defense shut out the Cornhuskers over the final three quarters.

The Gamecocks went to Gainesville, Fla., and captured their first SEC Eastern Division championship in a head-to-head battle against Spurrier’s former school, where he won a Heisman Trophy as a player and national championship as a coach. Lattimore ran for 212 yards and three touchdowns.

South Carolina notched a victory over its arch-rival for the first time in the Spurrier era by overcoming a 14-point second-half deficit in Death Valley. A 17-0 run was engineered by quarterback Blake Mitchell and capped by Ryan Succop’s fourth-quarter field goal.

In an epic game filled with seven lead changes, USC pulled out a victory in Athens, Ga., that set the tone for a great season. Defensive lineman Melvin Ingram’s 68-yard touchdown run on a first-half fake punt proved to be a gutsy call, and Lattimore’s 176 rushing yards helped the Gamecocks grind out the win. Ingram recovered a fumble for another score after freshman Jadevon Clowney stripped the ball from Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray to cement the victory.

By beating his alma mater in his first USC season, Spurrier let the rest of the conference know that he was back. The win not only snapped Florida’s 14-game winning streak against the Gamecocks, it also capped a school-record five-game SEC winning streak following victories over Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Tennessee and Arkansas. Spurrier got a ride off the field on the shoulders of his players.

This home win – the third straight over their rivals by a combined 97-37 count – put an exclamation point on the regular season, as the Gamecocks reached the 10-win mark for only the second time in school history. Quarterback Connor Shaw played a near-perfect game, throwing and running the football.

The Liberty Bowl victory in Memphis, Tenn., was the first bowl win at USC for Spurrier. It also finished off an 8-5 season, the best record of his first five seasons guiding the Gamecocks. Mitchell won the game’s MVP award with a big passing day, and tailback Cory Boyd rushed for two touchdowns.

In Spurrier’s first season, he coached the Gamecocks to their first win in Knoxville, Tenn. The victory snapped the Volunteers’ 12-game winning streak against USC, and it came on a night when former Tennessee quarterback Peyton Manning had his No. 16 jersey retired. Josh Brown kicked the winning 49-yard field goal with 2:45 to play.

South Carolina knocked off the No. 4 Rebels – the highest-ranked opponent USC defeated in Spurrier’s first five seasons – in a Thursday night home game by using an impressive defense that smothered the Ole Miss offense. The Rebels and highly touted quarterback Jevan Snead managed just 248 yards and one third-down conversion in 13 attempts.

This story was originally published October 13, 2015 at 8:23 PM with the headline "Top 10 Steve Spurrier wins as Gamecock coach."