The hole was already plenty deep. South Carolina, mostly by its own doing, found itself trailing by three touchdowns at halftime on Saturday.

Desperately needing a sign of life, the Gamecocks came out of the break and slowly drove down the field and moved inside the Ole Miss 20-yard line. But then came a big decision on 4th and 4. Do you go for it and extend the drive to try and score a touchdown or just take the points by way of a field goal?

Head coach Shane Beamer went with the latter option, taking his offense off the field and sending out his kicker Alex Herrera to try a 38-yard field goal to cut the deficit down to … 18 points. Much like his other decisions throughout the day, this one didn’t work out in his favor. Herrera missed wide right, which left South Carolina in the same spot it was before — still down 21 points.

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Even if Herrera made the field goal, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference in the final outcome. South Carolina’s offense never found the end zone in what would end up being a 27-3 loss to Ole Miss.

“I think it was a combination of things,” Beamer said, trying to put his finger on what led to the offensive struggles. “Was it good enough? No, absolutely not. When you score three points, it’s nowhere near good enough.”

South Carolina finished the game with 313 total yards and showed flashes at times. But that’s all it was — just flashes. Nothing more. The offense, which drove into Ole Miss territory on six different drives, only came away with three points and turned the ball over twice with two additional turnovers on downs.

There wasn’t just one singular thing that stood out as to why the offense couldn’t score. It was a mixture of everything. LaNorris Sellers, making his first start since Week 3, had an up-and-down day. His receivers couldn’t get open consistently. And the protection around him wasn’t great as he took a season-high six sacks.

But if there were any positives Beamer could take away from the lackluster performance, he felt the run game was “decent.” As a team, the Gamecocks rushed for 151 yards with Sellers accounting for 55 of those yards.

“I know with the sacks, the rushing yardage comes down and the yards per rush comes down,” Beamer said. “But on called runs, we were productive and hit some things in the passing game, but nowhere near productive enough there, not good enough on third down.”

[Win two tickets to the South Carolina-Texas A&M football game]

Outside of that, it was nearly impossible for Beamer to find much good through all the bad in the loss. Much like it has all year, South Carolina struggled on third and fourth downs and went a combined 6-for-20 in those situations.

The underlying theme in all these struggles were the details, according to Beamer.

“Overall, I think it was a thing here, a thing there. Everybody had a hand in it, starting with me as the head coach,” he said. “We’ve got to be more detailed in everything that we’re doing, whether it be techniques, assignments, route depths, how we attack certain leverages, you name it. Just gotta be better there.”