South Carolina vs. LSU Preview

South Carolina dropped a bomb on Georgia last week by defeating them 35-7 in Columbia.  This week the Gamecocks travel to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to play the #9 LSU Tigers in what will be their second of three games versus top ten opponents.
I’ve though all year that this stretch was going to tell the tale of this year’s South Carolina team.  I have to be honest though, I did not think that the Florida Gators were going to be as good as they have been.  A lot of that success has stemmed from an excellent defense that Will Muschamp has assembled in Gainesville.
LSU has had a tough year so far, as they are sitting at 5-1.  They are 1-1 in SEC play (beating Auburn and losing to Florida).  South Carolina heads into this week’s match-up at 6-0 and 4-0 in SEC play.
This will be a hard-nosed SEC game featuring two terrific defenses, and it will also feature many talented players on the offensive sides of the football.  I think South Carolina will see a completely different look to which they saw last week against Georgia.  Georgia played a style in which they were trying to keep the ball in front of the chains.  What I mean by that is they did not bring a lot of pressure against Connor Shaw.  This surprised me quite a bit, as teams playing South Carolina had found some success containing Shaw by bringing pressure.
Connor Shaw had all day in the pocket to throw last week (when he threw).  South Carolina found a great amount of success running the football.  They rushed the ball 51 times for 230 yards.  I absolutely can back Steve Spurrier’s decision to run the ball.  He took what Georgia was giving him, and that was a defense that did not bring much pressure or blitz to stop the run.
On the opening series against South Carolina, I only saw one stunt come off the corner which was irrelevant because Marcus Lattimore took the ball up the gut for 3-4 yards.  This made Georgia respect the run, and it ultimately made Georgia look for the run when Connor Shaw threw a very nice play-action strike to Bruce Ellington for the score.
Expect Les Miles to bring quite a bit more pressure this week.  South Carolina needs to be prepared for a lot of pressure and a lot of noise in “Death Valley” this weekend.  South Carolina played an awesome football game last weekend, as they were very hard to criticize while watching.  They did one thing that they have struggled a little bit in the past, and that thing was taking care of the football.  The South Carolina offense did not turn the ball over to Georgia one time last weekend.  This made the margin of error that much smaller for Georgia.
South Carolina’s offense will have to deal with pressure and not turn the ball over.  Another thing they need to focus on is not coming out slow to start the ball game.  They started off moving the ball against an obviously weaker Kentucky team in Lexington, Kentucky a few weeks ago, but they were stopped at the goal line.  They can not afford to give LSU any kind of momentum like that.  LSU is in a must-win kind of situation if they want to stay within striking distance of Alabama, and South Carolina needs to play with the precision they played with against Georgia.
On defense, South Carolina needs to repeat their performance of absolutely controlling the line of scrimmage.  Against Georgia, a team that averages 226 yards per game on the ground, South Carolina held them to 115 yards on 36 attempts.  Remember, 75 of those 115 yards came on a final drive with 3 minutes left in the fourth quarter when the score was 35-0.  They need to continue this against a very effective LSU rushing attack.
LSU went 1-13 on 3rd Downs against Florida last week.  That is a third down conversion rate of 8%!!!  Florida held LSU to a total of 50 offensive plays.  It is very hard to win a football game against a top 10 opponent when you only get 50 plays.  The Tigers were also held to only 42 yards on 25 rushing attempts.
South Carolina created only 1 turnover against Georgia, and that was really all they needed.  They forced many punts from the Bulldogs and held a pre-season Heisman contender in quarterback Aaron Murray to just 11 completions on 31 attempts.  This week South Carolina needs to stop the run early and force Zach Mettenberger to make mistakes.  To beat South Carolina, Mettenberger has to exploit South Carolina’s secondary and make clutch throws.
This week provides a chance for the South Carolina defense to make a true statement to the country, and I think they are more than up for the challenge.  The Gamecocks are in game #2 of their 3 week top 10 tour.  These three weeks will define this team’s year, and they should be excited to be receiving all the national attention they have been getting.  My prediction for this game will be coming later on this afternoon in my Week 7 SEC Predictions.  Feel free to hit me up twitter @griffaldo or send me an email at JCGriffin13@yahoo.com !