Tigers score game-winning touchdown with 1:38 remaining
Nearly 80 years after its last victory over the Tigers and a year after falling to the defending national champions twice, then-No. 10 USC squandered a four-point lead with 1:38 to play and ran out of time in Auburn territory on the ensuing drive, capping off a 16-13 defeat.
"We were pretty sad — pretty sad the entire game," coach Steve Spurrier said. "We couldn't run the ball, and we're not a really good passing team. They made some third downs and ended up winning the game."
The game-winning touchdown came on Auburn's longest possession of the day. Starting at its own 43-yard line, AU moved the ball inside the USC 10 — converting three third downs along the way — before completing the comeback on a 9-yard pass from Barrett Trotter to Philip Lutzenkirchen.
On the ensuing drive, the Gamecocks found themselves with third-and-20 at their own 36 with less than 40 seconds to play when Stephen Garcia hit Alshon Jeffery for a 19-yard completion. They proceeded to run a quick handoff to Marcus Lattimore for 3 yards before calling timeout with 12 seconds remaining.
Following an incompletion that left eight seconds on the clock, Garcia found Bruce Ellington across the middle for another first down with seemingly enough time to spike the ball. The officials ruled he was down as time expired, however, ending the drive and the game.
"I thought his knee went down with at least one second left," Spurrier said. "In fact, I know it did, or at least I think I know it did. The referee said when his knee went down it showed 0:00. I thought they reviewed it after the Tennessee–LSU game that happened [last year]. He said no, that it was zero. He said that's it, it's all over."
The loss came after another lackluster performance on the offensive side of the ball. The Gamecocks managed just 160 passing yards on the night, with 50 of them coming on a catch-and-run touchdown by Jeffery in the first quarter. Garcia managed just nine completions on 23 attempts while throwing two more interceptions, bringing his total for the season to nine.
Garcia was not made available to the media after the game. A USC spokesman said Garcia had requested to skip the postgame press conference earlier in the week after a personally trying week. Garcia's grandfather passed away early in the week. However, Garcia did release a statement through the school, expressing disappointment in the loss.
"It's tough losing, especially like that," said Garcia in the release. "We had a chance to win, and we had our chances to keep that lead. It just didn't work out for us tonight."
The usually reliable running game was absent as well as the Tigers proceeded to bottle up Lattimore for the majority of the evening, despite coming into the weekend with one of the nation's worst defenses against the run. The sophomore carried a season-low 17 times for 66 yards with a lone touchdown coming on a 15-yard run in the third quarter.
"I knew coming in that it was a good defensive front," Lattimore said. "I knew with those numbers [coming in], they've only played to SEC teams. Those numbers didn't affect our game plan because we knew it would be a tough game up front. We didn't question anything. We just kept running what we practiced."
Much of Auburn's success came from a one-sided advantage in time of possession. Maintaining the ball for 35:47, the Tigers managed to run 92 plays compared to USC's 52 and racked up 246 rushing yards on the day. Running back Michael Dyer led the way with 141 yards on a career-high 41 carries and gave AU a 9-6 lead in the first half on a 1-yard touchdown run.
"You have to give kudos to Dyer. He was hurt and came back in the game," said associate head coach for defense Ellis Johnson. "We have a lot of things we need to get better on. We're making mental mistakes. We're covering a lot of those things up with physical play."
In the midst of the setback in his team's pursuit of an SEC title, Spurrier said all the Gamecocks can do is turn their focus to next week's matchup with Kentucky.
"Right now, we're just going to lick our wounds and look at the tape to see if we need to make some changes around here," Spurrier said. "We need to make some changes, but we won't know what they are until we watch the tape."