As you guys know, I loves me some trends. Here are a couple worth noting.
Tonight, South Carolina faces a fairly daunting task when it takes on highly ranked Ole Miss. It’s fair to say that the ‘Cocks don’t have the best track record in games like this.
… South Carolina is 1-31 all-time against top-5 teams. The Gamecocks’ only win came in 1981 over No. 3 North Carolina in Chapel Hill. That was six head coaches ago.
They have never beaten a top-5 team at Williams-Brice Stadium.
And under Spurrier, the Gamecocks are just 1-7 against top-10 opponents and 5-13 against Top-25 foes.
Not good.
Meanwhile, Arizona State has its own cross to bear when it rolls into Athens.
… The Sun Devils, who face No. 17 Georgia this week in Athens, are 3-26 against top-25 teams since 2000. The program is also winless in four tries against the Southeastern Conference.
And it’s hard to see how this will help.
… Arizona State does have one big problem: All-America kicker Thomas Weber has been lost for possibly six weeks because of a groin injury, leaving the kicking chores to either walk-on freshman Bobby Wenzig or 26-year-old linebacker Mike Nixon.
Wenzig’s name isn’t even listed in the school’s media guide. Nixon, a former catcher in the Dodgers organization, enjoyed some kicking success at Phoenix’s Sunnyslope High — he made six field goals . . . in 2001.
Think they’ll be going for it on fourth-and-four at the Georgia 30?
Get The Picture 
Is Ole Miss really a top 5 team? Really?
How about finding me some Houston Nutt trends.
I would ask for some Ole Miss playing as a top 10 team trends, but that would require going way too far back in time.
I think the Ole Miss as a top 5 team lunacy ends tonight.
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Ole Piss is overrated but it won’t be Cackalacky taking them down.
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Ole Miss will lose a minimum of four games this year and finish the season unranked… which is exactly where they should be.
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I have no real reason to feel this way, but when I had to pick this game and the Cocks were getting 4 points at home, I just felt Ole Miss wasn’t going to cover. I think it was the memory of that Kentucky-SC game a couple of years ago in Columbia on a Thursday night that kept tainting my vision. SC’s defense kept making Woodson play an ugly ball game and ended up stealing the game with maybe two defensive scores. That is kind of what I am expecting tonight. Deja vu? We’ll see soon.
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You said “tainting”, hahaha
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North Carolina may be the only football program with a worse clutch game record than South Carolina.
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“Think they’ll be going for it on fourth-and-four at the Georgia 30?”
That may mean they have us where they want us based on this from Hale’s blog:
“Overall, the opposition is just 15-of-46 (32.6 percent) on third down, but on fourth down, that number shoots up to a successful conversion on 5-of-7 tries (71.4 percent), with one being the fake punt executed by South Carolina.”
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Yep, why wouldn’t a team go for it on 4th down against Georgia, given our defensive play?
Losing their FG kicker is a blessing in disguise for ASU.
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A warning: I thought the same thing in 2006…that it would make Richt be less conservative in the red zone, that we’d stop obviously settling for the FG as early as 2nd down, etc.
Well, no, we still kicked…it just meant that we were treated to some Andy “I Actually Had A Scholarship! Really!” Bailey misses instead of Coutu makes.
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In all fairness, Coutu tore his hamstring during the Tennessee game that year and missed the rest of the year.
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In fairness to whom?
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