Five Things We Learned From The Tennessee Game
posted by Scott Hood, Sunday, November 01, 2009
1. Freshmen Will Play Like Freshmen Sometimes: USC has a number of talented first-year players on offense like running backs Kenny Miles and Jarvis Giles, and, of course, wide receiver Alshon Jeffery. But there is something to the argument that you can rely too much on young players. Both of the fumbles in the first quarter were by freshmen – tight end Justice Cunningham and Miles. Later, a 75-yard TD return by Gilmore was wiped out by an illegal block penalty on D.J. Swearinger, a freshman from Greenwood. Replays showed the block occurred when Gilmore was five to 10-yards upfield. Most of the freshmen on USC’s roster should turn out to be a good, productive players. But when you rely extensively on freshmen, it’s almost assured you will experience some difficult growing pains in an unforgiving league like the SEC.
2. Lose The Turnover Margin, Lose the Game: Have you ever seen a SEC team lose the turnover battle by four and still beat another conference team? Neither have I. It’s not going to happen. Turnover margin is the most important statistic in football and Saturday’s game was further evidence of that. When you’re playing on the road in this conference, you simply can’t come out and start turning the ball over like USC did and expect to win. But, as poorly as USC played in the first three quarters, they trailed 28-13 and had the ball at midfield with over nine minutes remaining. Plenty of time for a comeback. But on the first play Garcia’s pass over the middle was intercepted by a linebacker. Tennessee took nearly five minutes off the clock in driving for a field goal. In the SEC, turnovers are like poison pills. Each one you commit diminishes your chances to win the game. Is it a coincidence LSU (+9), Alabama (+7) and Florida (+3) are all ranked in the top five in turnover margin in the SEC? Probably not.
3. The USC Defense Truly Misses Travian Robertson : In the first four games, USC surrendered an average of 100.3 yards per game on the ground. The most rushing yards by an opponent in that stretch was 139 by Ole Miss. Starting with the SC State game, though, the Gamecocks have surrendered an average of 195.8 rushing yards per game over the last five weeks. Tennessee had 199 yards rushing in Saturday’s game and seemingly did what they wanted at times when they turned to the ground game. The difference? Travian Robertson suffered a season-ending knee injury against the Rebels and the Gamecocks have missed his strong presence in the interior of the defensive line since then. Ladi Ajiboye returned from his suspension in the Ole Miss game but I’m sure defensive line coach Brad Lawing was counting on a three-man rotation of Robertson, Ajiboye and Nathan Pepper. But now the latter two must take most of the snaps.
4. Something Is Up With Chris Culliver and Weslye Saunders: Both players are juniors and have played plenty of good, solid football in their first three seasons with the Gamecocks. But it’s apparent based on their lethargic performances on Saturday night that something is wrong with both Culliver and Saunders. Culliver looked tentative on four kickoff returns, averaging just 11.5 yards (46 total yards), while missing several opportunities to make tackles on defense. Saunders, meanwhile, dropped a couple of passes and whiffed on multiple blocks. I know he has been struggling a bit from the after effects of his ankle injury, but how much of that is a valid excuse? Steve Spurrier even said Sunday that freshman Justice Cunningham is a better blocker. Are you kidding me? Saunders is not nearly the physical presence he should be at 6-foot-5, 280 pounds. Obviously, the antennas of Gamecock Nation are up after last season when multiple NFL-bound players appeared to coast through the final games of the season. Hopefully, that scenario is not being repeated.
5. Traveling Through Appalachia Is A Good Reality Check: East Tennessee is far from my favorite spot in the world. This time of the year, the weather in the mountains is often cold and rainy, and we saw plenty of the wet stuff on Saturday night despite forecasts it would move out of the area before kickoff. In my opinion, though, the biannual trip to Knoxville serves one benefit – it provides a good reality check for people like me who have grown accustomed to their comfortable suburban style existences. As we drove through Appalachia this weekend (avoiding I-40, of course, to detour around the rock slide), I was again amazed at some of the conditions in which people live. Frankly, you couldn’t give away some of the homes I saw. To borrow a sports phrase, the big leagues of poverty is Appalachia. It truly is heartbreaking. In fact, it’s so depressing that by the time you get to Knoxville, you almost don’t care about the football game anymore. Almost. But is that a good thing or a bad thing? I’m struggling with the answer to that troubling question.
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Saturday night’s 31-13 loss to Tennessee could teach us some valuable lessons. Or is it better to just flush it and move on to this Saturday’s annual battle with Arkansas in Fayetteville? As usual, there are five things we learned from this past Saturday’s game, even if things didn’t go USC’s way for most of the night.
1. Freshmen Will Play Like Freshmen Sometimes: USC has a number of talented first-year players on offense like running backs Kenny Miles and Jarvis Giles, and, of course, wide receiver Alshon Jeffery. But there is something to the argument that you can rely too much on young players. Both of the fumbles in the first quarter were by freshmen – tight end Justice Cunningham and Miles. Later, a 75-yard TD return by Gilmore was wiped out by an illegal block penalty on D.J. Swearinger, a freshman from Greenwood. Replays showed the block occurred when Gilmore was five to 10-yards upfield. Most of the freshmen on USC’s roster should turn out to be a good, productive players. But when you rely extensively on freshmen, it’s almost assured you will experience some difficult growing pains in an unforgiving league like the SEC.
2. Lose The Turnover Margin, Lose the Game: Have you ever seen a SEC team lose the turnover battle by four and still beat another conference team? Neither have I. It’s not going to happen. Turnover margin is the most important statistic in football and Saturday’s game was further evidence of that. When you’re playing on the road in this conference, you simply can’t come out and start turning the ball over like USC did and expect to win. But, as poorly as USC played in the first three quarters, they trailed 28-13 and had the ball at midfield with over nine minutes remaining. Plenty of time for a comeback. But on the first play Garcia’s pass over the middle was intercepted by a linebacker. Tennessee took nearly five minutes off the clock in driving for a field goal. In the SEC, turnovers are like poison pills. Each one you commit diminishes your chances to win the game. Is it a coincidence LSU (+9), Alabama (+7) and Florida (+3) are all ranked in the top five in turnover margin in the SEC? Probably not.
3. The USC Defense Truly Misses Travian Robertson : In the first four games, USC surrendered an average of 100.3 yards per game on the ground. The most rushing yards by an opponent in that stretch was 139 by Ole Miss. Starting with the SC State game, though, the Gamecocks have surrendered an average of 195.8 rushing yards per game over the last five weeks. Tennessee had 199 yards rushing in Saturday’s game and seemingly did what they wanted at times when they turned to the ground game. The difference? Travian Robertson suffered a season-ending knee injury against the Rebels and the Gamecocks have missed his strong presence in the interior of the defensive line since then. Ladi Ajiboye returned from his suspension in the Ole Miss game but I’m sure defensive line coach Brad Lawing was counting on a three-man rotation of Robertson, Ajiboye and Nathan Pepper. But now the latter two must take most of the snaps.
4. Something Is Up With Chris Culliver and Weslye Saunders: Both players are juniors and have played plenty of good, solid football in their first three seasons with the Gamecocks. But it’s apparent based on their lethargic performances on Saturday night that something is wrong with both Culliver and Saunders. Culliver looked tentative on four kickoff returns, averaging just 11.5 yards (46 total yards), while missing several opportunities to make tackles on defense. Saunders, meanwhile, dropped a couple of passes and whiffed on multiple blocks. I know he has been struggling a bit from the after effects of his ankle injury, but how much of that is a valid excuse? Steve Spurrier even said Sunday that freshman Justice Cunningham is a better blocker. Are you kidding me? Saunders is not nearly the physical presence he should be at 6-foot-5, 280 pounds. Obviously, the antennas of Gamecock Nation are up after last season when multiple NFL-bound players appeared to coast through the final games of the season. Hopefully, that scenario is not being repeated.
5. Traveling Through Appalachia Is A Good Reality Check: East Tennessee is far from my favorite spot in the world. This time of the year, the weather in the mountains is often cold and rainy, and we saw plenty of the wet stuff on Saturday night despite forecasts it would move out of the area before kickoff. In my opinion, though, the biannual trip to Knoxville serves one benefit – it provides a good reality check for people like me who have grown accustomed to their comfortable suburban style existences. As we drove through Appalachia this weekend (avoiding I-40, of course, to detour around the rock slide), I was again amazed at some of the conditions in which people live. Frankly, you couldn’t give away some of the homes I saw. To borrow a sports phrase, the big leagues of poverty is Appalachia. It truly is heartbreaking. In fact, it’s so depressing that by the time you get to Knoxville, you almost don’t care about the football game anymore. Almost. But is that a good thing or a bad thing? I’m struggling with the answer to that troubling question.
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Scott Hood. Since February of 2005, Scott has covered the South Carolina football, men's basketball and baseball programs for GamecockCentral. He may be reached by email at scottblog(at)gamecockcentral.com. Replace (at) with @.