South Carolina Football: 3 takeaways from historic victory over Auburn

1. The season isn’t hopeless

Although the season got off to a rocky start, this team seems to be learning from its mistakes and showing growth each week. Collin Hill has remained consistent with his completions and his receivers are doing a better job at not dropping passes. His pass protection has improved every week as well, allowing four sacks in the first two games, two last week and one this week.

The Gamecocks were outplayed on the field in both passing and rushing yards, but predictive moves by Bo Nix allowed Jaycee Horn to be where he needed to be to intercept the passes and ultimately cost Auburn the victory.

South Carolina only allowed Auburn to score once each quarter, holding them to field goals in three of the four frames.

With both sides of the balling showing improvement, the rest of the season doesn’t look quite as dreadful. The SEC has had its share of upsets this season and further schedule adjustments due to COVID-19, but after Saturday’s game, there are 3-of-7 schools in the SEC East with a 2-2 record which evens out the playing field a little bit heading into the rest of the year.

Next week, South Carolina heads to Baton Rouge to face the LSU Tigers who inadvertently had a bye this week due to COVID-19 will come into the game with a 1-2 record and will be hungry for a resounding victory.

The Gamecocks can use this week and last week’s victories as momentum and confidence builders going into next week, but in order to defeat a rested LSU team at home, both sides of the ball are going to have to bring their A-game.