Shaw said offense still can be better
The South Carolina offense turned in its most dominating performance of the season in Saturday’s 52-7 win at Arkansas, collecting 537 yards on 89 plays.
“Connor Shaw had another outstanding game. The receivers caught just about everything,” coach Steve Spurrier said. “We made a lot of good plays.”
Mostly unheralded coming into the season, the Gamecock offense has proved to be the backbone of the team, amassing 2,919 yards on the year.
After throwing for 261 yards and a touchdown and adding one more score on the ground last week against Kentucky with a sprained shoulder, quarterback Connor Shaw gained 219 yards in the air and tossed another three touchdowns against Arkansas.
However, according to Shaw, Gamecock fans have yet to see the offense firing on all cylinders.
“I still think that we haven’t played our best,” Shaw said. “I still think we can eliminate some mistakes and get better each week.”
Shaw is still yet to throw an interception in 2013, and his 85 completions on 124 pass attempts without a pick makes him the seventh-most efficient passer in the country and third-best in the SEC.
Since redshirt junior wide receiver Nick Jones’ breakout game against Georgia in week three, he has looked to be Shaw’s favorite target, but fan-favorite Bruce Ellington was the main beneficiary Saturday. The junior wide-out turned in his best game of the season against the Razorbacks, hauling in six balls for 96 yards and two touchdowns on the day.
Ellington’s second score of the game came with less than a minute to go before halftime to give South Carolina a 24-7 lead going into the locker room. The junior said the touchdown played a key role in giving his team the confidence it needed for the second half.
“I ran a good route and Connor did a good job throwing the ball to me,” Ellington said. “It’s real big to get the momentum on your side. When you’re playing an SEC team and you’re at their place every little thing helps.”
While Ellington stole the show on the receiving end, a total of nine Gamecocks caught a pass against Arkansas and three players scored touchdowns through the air.
South Carolina’s run game, led by sophomore tailback Mike Davis, was clicking as well Saturday. Davis went for 134 yards and a touchdown in the game, outdoing Arkansas’s Alex Collins, the SEC’s leading rusher going into the weekend.
For the bulk of the season, the South Carolina offense has put up monster numbers in the first half and sputtered at times in the second, factoring into the sacrificing of big leads that has become characteristic of the Gamecocks.
Shaw and the offense put that talk to rest Saturday, when he executed a 15-play, 79-yard scoring drive in the third quarter that took up 9 minutes and 29 seconds and effectively put the nail in the Razorbacks’ coffin.
Shaw said the decisive victory is a good building block for the two consecutive conference road games South Carolina will face in the coming weeks, but the senior knows the work is far from done.
“We knew we had to have the mentality to come in a play well on the road, and that’s something we haven’t really done in recent history,” Shaw said. “We wanted to come out here and make a statement, and I think we did.”