South Carolina a small underdog to Oklahoma in early betting lines

South Carolina is a small betting underdog to Oklahoma for next weekend’s road matchup with the Sooners, according to early lines released Sunday morning.

Draft Kings has the Sooners as an early 3-point favorite while FanDuel set the line at Oklahoma -3.5. Bally Sports and Bet Rivers both set it at 5.5 points. All of those lines are according to Vegas Insider, which has the early consensus line at Oklahoma -3 as of late Sunday morning.

The over/under on the game is 41.5 points, which isn’t surprising given the strength of both teams’ defenses and the inconsistency of their offenses.

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The Gamecocks (3-3, 1-3 SEC) are coming off a heartbreaking 27-25 defeat at Alabama, a game they entered as three-touchdown underdogs.

South Carolina has wins over Old Dominion, Kentucky, and Akron this season, along with losses to LSU, Ole Miss, and the Crimson Tide.

Oklahoma (4-2, 1-2 SEC), in its first season in the new-look SEC, is coming off a 34-3 beatdown at the hands of rival Texas in the Red River Rivalry game.

The Sooners have wins over Temple, Houston, Tulane, and Auburn with losses to Tennessee and the Longhorns.

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While the game will be the first ever matchup between South Carolina and Oklahoma, it will be a bit of a homecoming for Beamer who served as the Sooners’ tight ends coach before landing the job in Columbia.

“Being with Lincoln Riley (at Oklahoma) and that recruiting team (it was) just a new way of doing things, new way of seeing things,” Beamer said at SEC Media Days this year. “(I saw it at a program) not like Georgia, because that’s where I was coming from. And then being in a state, this isn’t a knock on South Carolina football, it’s facts,  the population of the state of South Carolina isn’t what the state of Texas is. And it isn’t what the state of Georgia is. 

“So therefore there’s fewer Power Five players coming out of the state of South Carolina each and every year then, you know, Texas and Georgia and California, a lot of states can say that. So being able to be creative on recruiting outside your state, like we had to do with Oklahoma was beneficial for me coming back to South Carolina also.”

The Gamecocks and Sooners are scheduled for a 12:45 p.m. ET kickoff on SEC Network.