Penalties, mental mistakes plague South Carolina in defeat to Missouri

Down 29-20 with a little under a minute remaining, South Carolina had a fleeting chance of getting themselves back into the game. The Gamecocks lined up at their own 47-yard line needing three yards for a first down that would keep their drive alive.

But one moment caused a stalk of straw to break the camel’s back. There was movement along the offensive line, followed by the throwing of flags and a cacophony of whistles from the officiating crew. Referee Lee Hedrick then delivered a message with which South Carolina had been familiar all night long.

“False start, offense, No. 74. Five-yard penalty, fourth down,” Hedrick said, addressing the crowd at Faurot Field.

Now facing fourth-and-eight from the Gamecocks’ 42-yard line, LaNorris Sellers fired a pass to Nyck Harbor. Missouri linebacker Josiah Trotter took Harbor down five yards short of the line to gain, ending South Carolina’s brief comeback attempt and cementing a 29-20 loss that dropped it to 2-2 on the season.

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Josiah Thompson‘s false start marked the 14th penalty the Gamecocks had committed against the Tigers. Those penalties pushed South Carolina back 98 total yards over the course of the night.

After the game, Shane Beamer couldn’t chalk up the Gamecocks’ disciplinary struggles to a one-time offense. South Carolina accumulated 85 penalty yards on eight flaggable offenses in last weekend’s blowout loss to Vanderbilt.

Beamer went as far as to quote Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein in his assessment of the team’s performance.

“It wasn’t just the offense tonight. It was the special teams not snapping a ball because we couldn’t hear, kicking a ball out of bounds. Those are pre-snap penalties, too,” Beamer said. “The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over again. When you have 14 penalties on the road, something’s got to change, starting with me.”

Some of those penalties proved to be much costlier than others. A separate call on Thompson in the third quarter — this time, resulting in a 10-yard loss for holding — pushed the Gamecocks far enough away from the first-down marker that they couldn’t convert on a 33-yard pass from Sellers to Harbor. Instead of sustaining a possession that could have resulted in a touchdown, they had to settle for a field goal.

Another prevented South Carolina from potentially having more time on its aforementioned final offensive drive. With just over four minutes to go, Missouri running back Jamal Roberts gained one yard on second down, setting up a third-and-four play at its own 27-yard line. If the Gamecocks got a stop on the next play, they could’ve had two more minutes to work with. A 15-yard facemask penalty called on Gabriel Brownlow-Dindy, though, allowed the Tigers to maintain possession of the football.

But penalties were just one ingredient in South Carolina’s Saturday night recipe. Its inability to gain yardage on the ground, among other factors, contributed to its defeat.

“I just told them in the locker room, when you get out-rushed 285 to minus-nine, you’re not going to win. When you are in the red zone like we were and went backwards, it’s going to be hard to win,” Beamer said. “When you have, once again, 14 penalties, it’s going to be hard to win.”

Beamer also mentioned that “it’s going to be hard to win” when the team falls short of executing. He specifically cited the Gamecocks’ penultimate offensive drive as an example of that phenomenon.

“It was three plays, and there’s opportunities there to make plays. We ran the quarterback counter into the boundary, and we don’t block the corner or the safety — which just can’t happen. Second down, I think, we throw the ball down the field, and we stopped running. And then, third down, we got a guy [Vandrevius Jacobs] wide open across the middle, and we’re not able to connect,” Beamer said. “When you’re on the road in the SEC, you’ve got to make plays: offense, defense and special teams. And we did not make enough plays tonight.”

As a result, South Carolina finds itself in a situation with which it is very familiar — possessing a 2-2 record through four games with plenty of questions to ask themselves. How will the Gamecocks find the answers to those questions?

Beamer said it won’t be easy.

“It’s a challenge, but that’s what we get paid to do. We got to look at everything: schematically, personnel, everything that we’re doing,” Beamer said. “We need to get better this week, and that’s all you can do: sit here and look at where you can be better at, and continue to attack that and work.”

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