Scott Davis: Gamecocks kick the door down with authority

Scott Davis has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter year-round (sign up here) and a column during football season that’s published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com.

This wasn’t 2020.

This wasn’t one of those doomed seasons like we endured back in the long, lonely pandemic days, when we watched the last gasps of the Will Muschamp Era playing out in front of us every Saturday.

No, hope hadn’t yet been killed off, hadn’t been completely vanquished for South Carolina Gamecock fans as their 3-3 team trudged to Norman to face the Oklahoma Sooners and conclude an October gauntlet that had thus far been rife with disappointment.

Hope was, as always, forever flickering. In the Palmetto State, it always is.

Despite crushing losses to LSU and Alabama and a strange no-show against Ole Miss, Gamecock fans had seen just enough – just enough – from their team to give themselves reason to tune in to the first meeting between South Carolina and Oklahoma at legendary Memorial Stadium.

In fact, there was even some quiet confidence amongst the team, its fans and even the national media that South Carolina could win in this vaunted environment: Every analyst on ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast save Kirk Herbstreit picked the Gamecocks. The Sooners were themselves limping into the contest, having suffered a brutal beating at the hands of archrival Texas the previous Saturday.

But this?

What absolutely no one was predicting was this: A 35-9 curb-stomping that saw the Gamecocks race out to a 21-0 lead within minutes of kickoff and featured a stunning nine sacks by the South Carolina defense.

It was an utter, profound, wholly complete domination of one of college football’s most important programs on their own home field. And it came at a time when the Sooners’ players, coaches and fans were hungry for a win that might rejuvenate their season and put them back on a path that in the preseason had the team ranked 16th in the preseason polls. But by the fourth quarter, empty seats outnumbered filled ones in Norman.

So thorough was the beatdown that even South Carolina coach Shane Beamer – typically ecstatic and prone to enjoyably chatty postgame commentary with whichever sideline reporter greets him following a big win – seemed reflective, grateful and relieved after the final seconds ticked away.

This wasn’t the jubilant Beamer we saw after South Carolina similarly dismantled Kentucky on the road behind an electrifying defensive effort. This was a coach who had led his players through a harrowing stretch that they had now survived. The 2024 season – predicted by many to be a forgettable slog that would end without a bowl appearance – now seemed not just alive but perhaps even ready for the taking by the Gamecocks.

Beamer praised the resilience his players had shown in staying focused despite all the near-misses and disappointments. “The mentality was enough is enough,” he said after the game. “It’s time to kick the door down.”

Door, meet foot.

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The Gamecock offense didn’t need to do much to contribute to the blowout, and they didn’t.

Instead, South Carolina’s defense scored all the points the team would need to win the game in the opening few minutes of the first quarter. A staggering nine different Gamecocks recorded a sack along the way to setting the all-time record for sacks by an opposing team inside Oklahoma’s stadium.

When it was all over, what looked like an impossible October had been transformed. It had begun with an indifferent performance against the Rebels, continued through a soul-melting loss in Tuscaloosa that somehow simultaneously encouraged and shattered the fan base, and now ended here, in the plains of Oklahoma, with an utter humiliation of the fabled Sooners. Just how we drew it up, right?

Yes, it was just another Saturday aboard the Shane Beamer Experience.

Whatever you think is going to happen next is never what happens next.

But you knew that already.

And here’s the mildly terrifying news. There are still five games left in this wild, unpredictable, outrageous season – can our hearts, stomachs and spirits possibly take any more?

If ever there was a good year for two Bye Weeks, it was this one. So rest up, Gamecock Nation. We’ve still got November to go.

And this season’s just been kicked wide open.

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The Nine Sacks (!!!!) Game Balls of the Week

Nine sacks, guys. Nine. It feels like there have been some entire seasons when the South Carolina defense didn’t compile nine sacks. The defensive swarm eventually became so overwhelming that I started feeling a twinge of surprise whenever an Oklahoma offensive series didn’t include a sack. That’s why we’ve got to hand out the first of our Game Balls to…

The Sacking of Norman – South Carolina’s defense collected four turnovers, sacked multiple Oklahoma quarterbacks nine times, scored enough points on their own to defeat the Sooners on Saturday and officially confirmed without any single shadow of a doubt that they are the most talented Gamecock defense in at least a decade. I think we can agree that was an impressive effort, no? Speaking of which….

South Carolina Defensive Coordinator Clayton White – Most of us knew there was some talent on the South Carolina defense as the 2024 season dawned. But few expected the unit to be quite as dominant and disruptive as it has often been this year. Other than some occasional lapses in containing big plays, Clayton White’s defense has done almost everything we could have hoped it would do across seven games.

The Joys of Flip-Flopping – Like many Gamecock fans, my frustration boiled up following the blown lead against Alabama, leading me to write in last week’s column that I didn’t want to hear any “This Team is Close” narratives after a nail-biting loss in Tuscaloosa. And like many Gamecock fans, I slowly started coming back to life as the week wore on leading into the Oklahoma game, so much so that by Friday’s newsletter, I had already come 180 degrees around to suggesting that not only was the season not lost, it could still be transformed into something special. Isn’t college football fun?

Spencer Rattler – Probably enjoyed seeing the final score of Saturday’s South Carolina-Oklahoma football game.

Seeing This Score on the Ticker During the Tennessee-Alabama Game – While watching Vols-Tide following South Carolina’s punishment of Oklahoma, I noticed the game’s score flickering at the bottom of the screen on the ticker. There it was: South Carolina 35, Oklahoma 9. Having come of age as a college football fan in the 1980s – when the Sooners were the most fearsome program in the land – this was not a final score I was ever expecting to run across in my lifetime. Just seeing those numbers really put the moment in perspective.

Shane Beamer’s Fond Memories of His Time in Norman – Seemed to provide him with warm feelings of gratitude and appreciation following his team’s rout of the Sooners. It was obvious how much this win meant to the coach.

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The “Wait, What About the Offense?” Deflated Balls of the Week

Total Yards – What if I told you that South Carolina destroyed Oklahoma on the road to the tune of 35-9…and that the Gamecocks had actually been outgained in Total Yards by the Sooners, 291 to 254? How would you feel about that?

Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad? – Self-inflicted miscues have been the bane of South Carolina’s season thus far, and Gamecock fans have been tormented by the team’s penchant for three things: Committing penalties, turning over the football and getting sacked while playing offense. On Saturday, the Gamecocks toned down the penalties and turned the ball over precisely zero times.

Lost in the shuffle of the South Carolina defense’s sack parade, though, was the ominous fact that the Gamecocks themselves gave up six sacks on offense. On just about any other Saturday, watching my team surrender six sacks would have had me going on a long, aimless walk through my neighborhood to “gather myself.”

Kirby Smart – Following Georgia’s evisceration of Number One Texas on the road Saturday night, Bulldog coach Kirby Smart somehow found it within himself to state in his postgame commentary that “Nobody believed. Nobody gave us a chance. Your whole network (ESPN) doubted us. Nobody believed us.”

He was speaking, of course, of a program that has won two national championships in the last three years and was ranked No. 1 in the preseason coming into this season. But you know, nobody believes in that downtrodden, ragtag group. Just a few days ago, Smart called out his own fans for not creating a raucous enough environment in Athens. This guy does realize he’s in charge of the most respected and accomplished program in college football, right? EVERYBODY believes in Georgia, my brother. Everybody.

As for South Carolina…well, we never quite know what to believe.

They might not lose again this season. They might still find a way to miss the postseason.

Anything’s possible. Everything’s possible. Nine sacks, on the road in Oklahoma? Possible.

I need another Bye Week.

Tell me how you’re feeling after South Carolina’s pounding of Oklahoma by writing me at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com.

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