Kentucky 31, South Carolina 28. The ham-fisted ending by South Carolina seems appropriate for two of the emerging themes of a chaotic season: a) Baffling clock management, and b) Wild inconsistency by teams at the top of the polls. A week after knocking off No. 1 Alabama, the Gamecocks sacrificed all of that momentum and goodwill with another textbook example of how not to finish a two-minute drill.
Of course, the first rule of a successful comeback is to avoid it altogether, which South Carolina had a chance to do with a 28-23 lead and Kentucky facing 4th-and-7 from the USC 24 with 1:45 to play. Instead, the Carolina secondary froze as the Wildcats' best player, Randall Cobb, streaked untouched to the end zone to bring in quarterback Mike Hartline's fourth touchdown pass of the night with no Gamecock defender in sight. Cobb ran the two-point conversion in himself to extend the lead to 31-28.
One of the other primary rules is to stop the clock as often as possible without burning timeouts until absolutely necessary. On the first front, quarterback Stephen Garcia did exactly what he needed to on South Carolina's subsequent drive by completing three passes for clock-killing first downs, moving the Gamecocks within range of a field goal attempt that would send the game to overtime. With the timeouts, though, Steve Spurrier was less judicious: The Ball Coach burned USC's second stoppage of the half with the clock already stopped, after receiver D.L. Moore took a 16-yard completion for a first down out of bounds at the Kentucky 38, then inexplicably called for the Gamecocks' last timeout with the clock stopped again, this time at 11 seconds following another first down connection that Tyrone Gurley took out of bounds at the Wildcat 20.
Normally, with a timeout to burn, teams in that situation would use a down with 11 seconds on the clock to run or kneel the ball in the middle of the field, to set up the kicker for the crucial field goal to tie. Carolina, on the other hand, had no way to stop the clock after wasting the timeouts when it didn't need them; running or kneeling the ball was out of the question with so little time to regroup for a spike. Not wanting to send on the kicker with time for another play, Garcia went for the only option at his disposal that wouldn't risk the clock running out by having a receiver tackled inbounds: A lob into the end zone ... which was tipped and easily picked off by Anthony Mosley to seal the upset for the Wildcats.
In retrospect, it's easy to say Spurrier should have just settled for overtime on the field goal try instead of taking a fairly hopeless shot into double coverage. If he'd had two timeouts, though, the options would have expanded dramatically, both for taking a shot at the winning touchdown and setting up an easier kick for Stephen Lanning. As it was, the Gamecocks opted for a mini-Hail Mary, and thus did their brief moment as an SEC frontrunner come to an ignoble end.
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