COLUMBIA, S.C. – The No. 10 Texas A&M football team suffered its first SEC loss of the season Saturday night as it fell on the road to South Carolina, 44-20, at Williams-Brice Stadium.
 
Marcel Reed earned the start for the Aggies (7-2, 5-1 SEC) and finished the night 18-of-28 passing for 206 yards and one touchdown. The redshirt freshman also added 46 yards on the ground on 16 attempts. Running back Amari Daniels led the Maroon & White with 83 yards on 13 carries to go along with one score. Among the Aggie receivers, Jabre Barber logged a team-best 80 yards on seven catches and one touchdown.
 
Linebacker Taurean York collected a team-high eight tackles, five of which were solos, while Dalton Brooks, Marcus Ratcliffe and Shemar Stewart each followed with five.
 
 A fast start from the Gamecocks (5-3, 3-3 SEC) saw the Aggies face an early 14-0 deficit with 8:24 left in the opening quarter. Texas A&M was able to slow South Carolina’s momentum behind the leg of Randy Bond, who connected on a 52-yard field goal with 5:15 left in the period. The Maroon & White’s defense provided a spark in the closing minute of the first as Will Lee III forced a fumble that BJ Mayes was able to recover.
 
The Aggies capitalized off the turnover in the second quarter as Bond connected on a career-long 55-yard field goal attempt with 13:12 left in the half, cutting the deficit to 14-6. Following a South Carolina 25-yard field goal, Amari Daniels found a hole through the right side and broke free for a season-long 56-yard touchdown run to pull the Maroon & White to within four, 17-13, with 7:29 remaining. The Aggies later took the lead when Reed found Barber for a 2-yard touchdown following a fourth down stop from the Texas A&M defense. Bond’s extra point gave the Maroon & White a 20-17 advantage with 1:08 showing on the clock.
 
The two squads went on to enter the halftime break tied at 20-20 as the Gamecocks pushed a 44-yard field goal through the uprights in the closing seconds of the quarter.
 
Texas A&M gave up an early touchdown out of the break and didn’t have an answer for the Gamecocks, who were able to pull away in the third quarter and tack on a pair of touchdowns in the fourth quarter.

The Aggies are off next week before hosting New Mexico State on Senior Day on November 16.

 

Team Notes        

• Texas A&M has forced a turnover in seven of the last eight games after forcing a fumble against South Carolina. 
• The Maroon & White scored on a 50-plus-yard rushing play for the third time this season.
• For the first time since the 2015 season, the Aggies connected on multiple 50-plus-yard field goals in a game.

Individual Notes     
 

• Junior RB Amari Daniels broke away on a season-long 56-yard touchdown run for his sixth rushing score of the season.
• Senior WR Jabre Barber led the receiving corps for the second time in three games catching a season-best seven passes for 80 yards and his first touchdown as an Aggie.
• Freshman QB Marcel Reed threw for a season-best 206 yards, completing 18 of his of 28 passes.
• Sophomore LB Taurean York led the defense for the fifth time this season with eight tackles.
• Junior DL Shemar Stewart matched his career high with five takedowns and added a career-best two breakups.
• Sophomore DB Marcus Ratcliffe tallied a season-best five tackles for the third time this year.   
• Graduate K Randy Bond connected on his first field goal from over 50 yards of the season, first sending a 52-yarder through the uprights in the first quarter and later registering a new career-long with a 55-yard field goal in the second quarter.
• Bond has made eight field goals from 50-or-more yards in his career and became the first A&M kicker to connect on two 50-plus-yard field goals in a game since Taylor Bertolet (2012-15) hit 54- and 52-yarders against Alabama in 2015.
• Bond’s eight points in the game upped his career total to 270 to put him in a tie for seventh all-time with Rodney Thomas (1991-94) and Darren Lewis (1987-90) on A&M’s overall scoring list.

 

Hats off to South Carolina. They beat us. Beat us on the line of scrimmage, both sides of the ball. Controlled the game. Forced turnovers. Couldn’t run the ball. Couldn’t tackle, couldn’t control the quarterback. And so, you know, we didn’t do any of the things you need to do to win a football game. And so that’s why we lost. We’ve got to get better. We got to fix them. And we’ve got to not ever play like that again. 

How disappointed were you in the tackling and just what do you think you guys weren’t doing, or what they were doing well, that was leading to so many of those missed tackles?

Obviously I don’t want to sit up here and say it’s all us, right? Because you have to give them credit. I’m not going to be the coach who sits up here and gives them no credit. They got a big quarterback. He’s 240 pounds. They got a big running back. He’s 230 pounds. And you know, we didn’t bring our feet. We didn’t tackle the way you need to to tackle big backs. They’re big, powerful kids. And if you want to tackle big, powerful kids, you have to bring your body through the tackle. And we didn’t do that tonight. 

On the fourth downs when you decided to go for them on your end of the field was that possibly a byproduct of maybe not having enough confidence in your defense to stop?

No. I mean, it was fourth and half a yard, both of them, that we went for. And we’re going to do that. I mean, that’s something that we’re going to do. We haven’t really been in that situation before, but, you know, we have to be able to get half a yard. 

With the penalties do you feel like parts of the season y’all skated by and today kind of came back to bite you? 

For sure. Yeah I told them, in a couple areas. I think the missed tackles have been growing and growing and you know sometimes the hardest thing to do is learn in victory, because it gets covered up and it gets masked up. So I think some of the things that have been behind the scenes and we’ve been playing and winning through certainly showed up tonight in a really bad way. And so that’s on me. That’s my job as a coach is to get them to understand that to the level they need to understand and to fix it. And I didn’t do that. And so that’s on me. 

After the way it started did you feel like you kind of gained a little control and some momentum heading into halftime?

I don’t know that I ever thought we had control. I thought we should have come into the locker room with the lead. The two penalties on the two minute drive, you know, we just gifted them the three points to tie the game up. To some degree, that gave them the momentum back. We had stormed back. We had taken the lead. I thought we did a really good job managing the clock at the end of the first half and left them very little time to go down the field. And, you know, we gave them, what, 25 or 30 yards in penalties on that drive? And we just gifted them a field goal. But obviously at 20-20 you still felt like you had a chance. And then we misfit a run and on a fourth and one, they break it for a long touchdown. That’s a killer. And then we don’t get the fourth and half a yard and we are able to go out and hold them to a field goal, but that’s a killer. And then I still think at that point we’re still battling. Then it just gets to a point where we’re playing more of an all out defense to try to stop them from running the ball and they pop a long one and put the game away.

Off the top of your head what do you think of the performance of Marcel?

Certainly up and down some. We’re not built to play that kind of game. We can’t get behind like that in the second half. Once it got to that point and we weren’t able to play the game that we’re better at, I think that really hurt us. But, again, he’s still a young kid. He’s learning. He’s getting better. He’s got to be a little bit more careful with the football, obviously. The interception on the first down, that was obviously a huge momentum swing. I think we were down 10 at that point. He’s got to learn. But certainly not on him any of the game. There’s a lot of other things starting with me that that caused us to lose this football game.

Is Marcel the starter moving forward?

He’s the starter now and we’ll see where we go. 

How’s Le’Veon Moss doing and how much did it hurt not having him?

Le’Veon is a great back and not having him was tough. We’ll see. I don’t think it looks real good right now, but, I don’t think it maybe looks as bad as it might have on the field. Hopefully it’s not one of those awful ones, but I do think he’ll be out for a little while.

Mike, is there any chance at all that you guys, after last week’s win and all the praise and everything that they’ve gotten over the last week that they’ve lost any focus? 

No.

Does it feel like the everything is still on the table for what you want to do to make this a successful season? 

It feels like it because it is. We’re tied for first. We still control our own destiny to Atlanta. We still control our own destiny to the playoff. So, yeah, it very much feels like it. Because it is. 

You got close to getting to Sellers a few times, what did he do to escape? 

Yeah, it felt like we were close to getting him a bunch of times. And I think we got him none. That’s why I’m chuckling. He’s a big kid. And obviously I did a poor job of getting our kids to understand how you have to tackle a 240-pound kid. We kept trying to go up high around him. And he’s too strong for that.