The Daily Gamecock

A new rivalry: USC, UGA game has greater significance

Spurrier doesn't think Bulldogs consider Gamecocks a rival

 

South Carolina junior tailback Marcus Lattimore could feel a different energy around Columbia as soon as he returned from Kentucky.

“Just around campus, everybody’s like, ‘Good luck Saturday,” Lattimore said. “It’s more than usual. When you go get something to eat, everybody’s ready for the Georgia game.”

With both teams undefeated and side-by-side in the national rankings, Georgia having a slight edge at No. 5 to the Gamecocks’ No. 6 ranking, the conference rivalry has taken on a new life as the Gamecocks’ biggest conference rival. No matchup between the two has been decided by a margin greater than 11 points since 2007, USC winning three of the last five.

Though the game has a new significance with both teams atop the SEC East and it having major implications for which squad will be vying for an SEC Championship in Atlanta, USC coach Steve Spurrier said he doesn’t believe his team can rival Georgia from a historical standpoint. A win over the Bulldogs on Saturday will be another statement about how far the Gamecocks have come and where they could be going.

“I think Georgia is our biggest conference rival,” Spurrier said. “We’re certainly not their biggest conference rival. They’ve got Florida, Auburn and in-state, of course, they have Georgia Tech — just like we have Clemson. South Carolina hasn’t beaten enough teams for them to consider us a rival.”

The Gamecocks lost five straight in the series before the tide changed in 2007. With the game traditionally played during the second week of the season, the two teams are typically undefeated when they meet, but with it falling later in the season this year and both teams being ranked in the top 10, there’s more at stake. Just USC, Georgia and Florida are undefeated in the East, with the Gators hosting No. 4 LSU on Saturday. Offseason jabs toward the Bulldogs by Spurrier also added to the intrigue of this year.

Though the Gamecocks swept their SEC East slate, Georgia still won the division after an 0-2 start because USC lost both of the SEC West games on the schedule, having a worse conference record than the Bulldogs, who had one of their two losses against out-of-conference Boise State. Spurrier tried to propose a new model for determining the division champ, counting just the conference games within the division toward determining a division champion and citing a more challenging schedule than the Bulldogs.

The proposal was struck down because the model would lessen the importance of conference games between the two divisions. Then Spurrier quipped to ESPN.com that he preferred playing Georgia during the second week of the season, as opposed to in the middle of the schedule, because he could always count on the Bulldogs having a few players on the roster suspended for the start of the season.

He said he doesn’t understate how important wins against the Bulldogs are for the upstart Gamecocks. He opened his press conference by encouraging fans to “be nice” to ESPN College GameDay personality and former college football coach Lee Corso, despite Corso saying South Carolina would never win the SEC Championship.

Spurrier pointed out that for now, Corso’s been right.

“Beating Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Clemson (last year), I’m going to ask Coach Corso this weekend if he thought we could beat those in a year,” Spurrier said. “That might have been in 4,000 years we can’t do that. He might have said that, too. Yeah, things have changed a little bit. Being very competitive with everybody in the conference is something that certainly we’re proud of. We’re competitive, and I said we’re not the best team, but we’re up there among the best teams right now, obviously by looking at the records of everyone. Hopefully, we can obviously be there at the end of the year.”

Spurrier said a lot of the rivalry from the Gamecocks’ standpoint has to do with Georgia being the closest SEC school to USC, with many of the team’s players calling the state home. For Connor Shaw, who will be making his first start against Georgia, getting to play against the Bulldogs was always something in the back of his mind when he signed with South Carolina. The Flowery Branch, Ga., native lived just an hour outside of the Bulldogs’ campus.

“Just being so close to Athens, Ga., and being recruited by Georgia and all that — yeah, it’s pretty big and exciting for me,” Shaw said.

Though the Gamecocks have maintained they need to treat the game like it’s any other, they’ve expressed how aware they are of the significance of this year’s game, both for this season and for the program as a whole. Sophomore defensive end Jadeveon Clowney remembers it being his first SEC start and having one of his best games against one of the top tackles he’s faced.

Clowney said playing UGA was the test he needed to prepare him for the SEC. Saturday’s experience has the opportunity to be the same for the Gamecocks.

“To me, it’s like the biggest rivalry and game we play,” Clowney said. “If they’re in the lead in the SEC East, we’re always right there behind them, and it’s always us or them for the SEC East every year every time we play. To me, it’s our biggest rival.”


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