How Gamecocks feel about pundits’ low expectations for 2016

The questions get tired after maybe the first one is asked.

How do you take the low expectations? Does it make you mad to get picked last? Can the South Carolina football team take the slights and turn them into motivation?

It shouldn’t surprise with a coach who projects a no-nonsense attitude, the answer is mostly no.

“We don’t worry about what’s going on outside,” tight end K.C. Crosby said. “We worry about us because that’s what’s going to help us win: us.”

It’s not hard to see why the predictions have been dire. The team cratered in 2015 with a 3-9 record for a team set to lose a much of its top talent. The next group comes in thin at a variety of spots, needing a range of young and unproven players to step up.

With a new coaching staff stepping in, SBNation’s Bill Connelly dubbed 2016 a “year zero,” a part of a coach’s record so trying and unlikely to produce success, it should hardly count at all.

“We don’t buy into it,” defensive back Chris Lammons said. “We just take it all to practice and then go after it. We hear all the stuff, Vanderbilt this, other team that.”

The Commodores, South Carolina’s first opponent rode a set of cheery narratives past South Carolina in the SEC preseason poll (the Gamecocks were picked last, behind a Kentucky program fighting to keep a coach and Missouri program under new management). CBS pegged the Gamecocks as the worst team in the conference.

But some of the players found something in getting picked last to spur them on.

Linebacker T.J. Holloman called it nothing but motivation. Linebacker Bryson Allen-Williams said the staff, coach Will Muschamp and strength coach Jeff Dillman told the team to prove everybody wrong. Quarterback Perry Orth said it might have been motivating during the summer, but that time is past.

Safety Jordan Diggs perhaps summed it up best saying it’s not something his team dwells on, but not something they forget.

“Coach says, all that negative stuff, just treat them like rocks in a bag,” Diggs said, making a tossing motion. “Keep throwing them in. Definitely, my pouch is getting heavy.”

This story was originally published August 16, 2016 at 1:10 PM.