South Carolina Preview

#4 South Carolina

We are 41 days away from the South Carolina Gamecocks kicking off the college football season vs Vanderbilt. South Carolina checks in as my #4 team in my SEC Power Poll.

This is the golden age for the South Carolina Gamecocks as they come off of back to back very successful seasons and 2012 is shaping up to be the same. There's lots of reasons for the ole ball coach Steve Spurrier to be happy these days as he finally has a stable quarterback; one of the best running attacks in the SEC; and a SEC quality defence.
Last year after the Auburn lost Spurrier made a move to change quarterbacks to Connor Shaw who took the Gamecocks to a 7-1 record to finish out the season. During that time Shaw proved to be a dual threat QB hitting 123 of his 188 attempts that's %65.4 for 1448 yards with 14 TD's and 6 INT's on the ground; Shaw ran for 525 yards and added 8 more TD's.
To go along with the solid play of Shaw the Gamecocks have the best running back in the SEC in Marcus Lattimore who ran for over 800 yards in 7 games before getting injured. Also in the back field with Lattimore is Brandon Wilds who really started to show flashes of an solid SEC back in the later half of the season.
Last season South Carolina was 3rd in total defence, but they lose 6 of those guys including Melvin Ingram, but I don't look for this defence to slip to far being lead by preseason all SEC DE Jadeveon Clowney. They will have some work to do in their pass defence.

  

Returning Starters (14)

Offence: 7

Defence: 6

ST: 2

Schedule and Predictions

• @ Vanderbilt W
• East Carolina W
• UAB W
• Missouri W
• @ Kentucky W
• Georgia ???? W
• @ LSU L
• @ Florida ? W
• Tennessee W
• Arkansas ? W
• Wofford W
• @ Clemson ? W

I'm saying 11-1, but I really think they will lose one of there swing (?) games in @ Florida or Arkansas paving the way for Georgia to once again lose to South Carolina, but win the east. The reason I'm taking South Carolina over Georgia is the fact that the game is in South Carolina and the two teams are very equal. There is differently a chance that this team could be pretty close to running the table if the ball bounces their way in 2012

-Patrick Pierce

Follow me on Twitter @Patrickp13