South Carolina Football can’t hold halftime lead, outlasted by Georgia Bulldogs

South Carolina Football vs. Furman:
Other Notes

• During the pregame, Sir Big Spur tried to take a bite out of UGA
• True freshman Tree Babalade started at left tackle. He was excellent in pass protection for most of the game.
• Jalon Kilgore, Nick Emmanwori, DQ Smith, Marcellas Dial, and O’Donnell Fortune all started in the secondary. David Spaulding played a lot of snaps, as well.
• The Gamecocks looked really crisp on offense on the first drive, despite being limited in the running game.
• Juice Wells looked really good on the first drive before getting hurt on his touchdown catch. Beamer’s injury update made it sound like it was a new injury to the same foot that has bothered Wells since the offseason.
• The offensive line still struggled to get any push in the run game. However, other than right tackle Sidney Fugar, the unit was much better at protecting Rattler. Georgia still got pressure because they’re a really good defensive football team. However, Carolina did about as well as they could in pass protection in the first half. The second half saw the rest of the line join in Fugar’s struggles.
  • The offensive line really struggled to block Georgia when they stunted. Any time that anything remotely exotic was called up front, the Gamecocks struggled to contain it.
• Spencer Rattler was very effective as a scrambler.
• Xavier Legette caught another big 50-50 ball thrown down the field.
• Mario Anderson had two carries for nine yards and played a lot on the first two drives of the game. He barely saw the field after that.
• Dowell Loggains continues to show himself to be a very good hire for Shane Beamer’s staff. Despite the struggles in the run game, the Gamecock offense was very good in the first half. In the second half, as Georgia’s defense adjusted, the offense struggled in a big way.
• TJ Sanders had a great game, especially in the first half, getting snaps at both defensive end and defensive tackle.
• Linebacker Stone Blanton had a sack but missed on a lot of tackles in this one, finishing with just 4 stops despite playing almost the entire game.
• Georgia had a lot of its success attacking the edges as the South Carolina secondary struggled to get off of blocks in the early parts of the second half. Once Carolina adjusted, Georgia attacked the middle of the field successfully and also began running the ball well.
• Kai Kroeger continues to struggle a bit. The All-American punter has not been nearly as dominant as he was in 2022.
• The Gamecocks were penalized far too often in this game. 11 penalties directly cost the Gamecocks 73 yards, and several of those flags cost Carolina big plays: a 20+ yard reception by Josh Simon was wiped out due to holding, a 3rd-down stop was eliminated due to defensive holding, etc.