From the start it was evident that the gamecocks were just not ready to play. Not to say that they could not match up with UConn as on paper it played to the Gamecocks strength. UConn however came out the gates with emotion and did all the right things.
The Univ of South Carolina got only 4 first downs the entire first half which says so much about the play of the USC offense. UConn brought a balanced attack and got help from USC's dumb penalties. The gamecocks defense did its best but with no help from the offense it was a hurdle too tall to get over.
The gamecocks got down 13-0 at half and never really got anything going. The offense was flat and dropped too many passes. Seems they abandoned the run too early and Garcia forced some throws that he shouldn't have plus a offensive line that you can tell needs a coach.
I credit UConn as they did their job and never allowed USC to get in sync. I could go on and on about the mistakes and "what if's" but I will stop there and let Spurrier sum it up...
“The first thing I want to do is apologize to about 30,000 Gamecocks who came here to see a football game, and we couldn’t put one on,” he said. “I thought we were ready to play. But obviously our offense was very sad and our defense wasn’t as good as it’s been most of the time. We thoroughly got beat by a better team, a better disciplined team.”Carolina scored late in game to make it 7-20 with 3:26 to play but it was a wee bit too late. The game simply never played in the favor of the gamecocks and thank you UConn for not running up the score.
I do feel 2010 will be better for Carolina than their PapaJohns.com Bowl performance so don't lose the faith in the gamecocks!
