It's November, which means it's the stretch run in the SEC, which means it's just about time for South Carolina's regularly-scheduled collapse. In 2006, the Gamecocks went out by dropping their last three conference games. In 2007, a 6-1, top-10 start only set up a five-game free fall to the finish. The 2008 'Cocks dropped their last three, including a 50-point loss at Florida. Last year's team saw a 5-1 start disintegrate into a 1-4 finish in SEC play, capped by a humiliating flop against UConn in the bowl game.And just last week, a 6-2, top-20 outfit with a solid lead in the SEC East for the first time ever kicked off the final push by getting run out of its own stadium in a three-touchdown loss to Arkansas. Meanwhile, Florida was busy looking like Florida for the second week in a row, and Carolina's grip on the division went limp.
Up to that point, even taking into account the last-second loss at Kentucky, this really was shaping up as the team the Gamecocks have been waiting for since Steve Spurrier assumed the wheel six years ago. Most prominently, freshman running back Marcus Lattimore and receiver Alshon Jeffery have emerged as first-rate weapons to complement Stephen Garcia, the most experienced quarterback in the conference. But this edition has most clearly distinguished itself from its predecessors in two significant ways, by a) Bringing down an elite, SEC championship-caliber team in its Oct. 9 upset over then-No. 1 Alabama, and b) Holding up as well as anyone else in the SEC against the run, a traditional sore spot in which Carolina currently leads the conference, thanks largely to its nasty pass rush.
A loss Saturday night, though, with the Gamecocks' first ever trip to the SEC Championship Game on the line, would render any distinctions irrelevant. Short of a division title, this will be just another run-of-the-mill South Carolina team that folds down the stretch, falls out of the polls, falls on its face in the big road game and comes limping in at .500 at the end of SEC play. In other words, it would wrap up the entire Steve Spurrier era at USC in one neat, three-hour package, with the bow slightly askew.
That would hurt more than usual, because the conventional wisdom about this team since its early win over Georgia is right: If Spurrier can't get to the SEC Championship Game with this bunch, it may be time to give up hope – not because this outfit is so special, but because the gap between a better-than-average group of Gamecocks and subpar editions of the traditional division heavies isn't going to get any closer than it is right now at any point in the foreseeable future. For most of the year, that gap has been nonexistent, or even beginning to widen in Carolina's favor. Given Florida's surge out of a midseason bye week and the Arkansas debacle in Columbia, the natural inclination Saturday – as confirmed by the 6½-point spread – is to take the Gators to reassert their usual position at the front of the pack at home. If that's how it goes, no one will be surprised. But if Spurrier can deliver the long-awaited breakthrough by a perennial second-class citizen, on the same field where he made his name as both a coach and player, he'll officially ascend to the role of master of his new domain, too. And only three or four years later than he'd initially hoped...
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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
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