South Carolina Football Way-Too-Early Schedule Preview: Missouri Tigers
By Kevin Miller
The 2023 South Carolina football schedule is the most difficult in the country in terms of 2022 win percentage, and the Gamecocks’ seventh game will come against a team that has inexplicably had Carolina’s number in recent seasons. Mizzou has beaten the Gamecocks four straight times, and the Gamecocks’ last win in the series was the contest played in a torrential downpour known as the “Scarnecchia Game.”
Since then, both programs have fired their head coaches and hired new ones, and the programs seem to be headed in opposite directions. The Tigers have not finished above .500 in Eli Drinkwitz’s first three years in the other Columbia while the Gamecocks have improved their record in both of Shane Beamer’s seasons at the helm of the South Carolina program.
Missouri will be playing their eighth straight game without a bye week as the Tigers don’t have a week off until after the Carolina game. South Carolina will have taken their bye two weeks before the matchup.
Accurately predicting the South Carolina-Missouri game has been outrageously difficult in recent seasons. The Gamecocks were a far better team in 2022, but Missouri won without much resistance. In 2020, a porous Gamecock defense held the Tigers to just 17 points, and the elite Carolina rushing attack was held to half of its season average for yards on the ground. Strange turnovers and untimely penalties have been commonplace, as well.
One of South Carolina’s two poorest performances in 2022 came at home against Missouri when the Gamecock offense couldn’t get anything going against the Tigers. That has been a trend in recent seasons as the Gamecocks have scored just one touchdown in two of the three games against Mizzou under Drinkwitz.
New offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains will have had a half season’s worth of games before traveling to CoMo to take on Missouri, and he will have been tested by five Power 5 opponents. Missouri, on the other hand, will have played three non-Power 5 teams during that same span. The Gamecock offense must be improved for South Carolina to end Missouri’s win streak in the Mayor’s Cup series.
Overall, though, South Carolina’s defense against Missouri’s offense could be even more of a key matchup.
Missouri has questions at quarterback as Brady Cook started last season but was relatively unremarkable. Jake Garcia was highly touted out of high school and just transferred in from Miami. They also lost their top receiver from 2022 as Dominic Lovett hit the transfer portal and ended up with the Georgia Bulldogs. The passing game issues for the Tigers coincides with pass defense questions for a Gamecock team that lost both Cam Smith and Darius Rush to the NFL.
Another interesting aspect of this matchup will be the South Carolina rushing defense against the Missouri run game. Missouri could be replacing all of its interior offensive linemen as both guard spots and the center position are up for grabs this summer in Columbia, Missouri. Two starters return, but both players were big weaknesses for the Tigers in 2022. How well the Zacch Pickens-less Gamecocks can stop the Nathaniel Peat and Cody Schrader ground game will be critical.
A swing game of all swing games, the Gamecocks need to beat the Tigers if they hope to improve upon their 8-win season from 2022. Drinkwitz could be coaching for his job if his team doesn’t start the year off well. Missouri should be betting favorites in at least five of their first seven games, but if the Tigers don’t perform well in swing games against Kansas State, Kentucky, and Memphis, the contest against the Gamecocks could be very important for Drinkwitz as his team will take on Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, and Arkansas to finish the year.
The South Carolina football program and its roster are both in better places than Missouri’s. However, with the way this series has gone lately, no Gamecock fans will feel comfortable with their team’s westbound road trip.
As things stand today, Carolina is better than Mizzou, but football is played on the field and not on paper, something the Gamecocks found out the hard way last year. For the sake of the program’s future, South Carolina football fans should look for the 4-game losing streak to end, but no one should count out the Tigers until the Gamecocks finally can get the monkey off their backs.