Well, we knew Vanderbilt had been playing with fire over the past few weeks — starting around the Ball State game, the offense hasn’t really done a whole lot, relying on the defense to play bend-don’t-break ball and wait for the opponent to beat itself. When that formula runs into Beamerball, well, what you see above is the result.

Vanderbilt’s defense bent but didn’t break, holding South Carolina to a missed field goal attempt on its first drive. Then the defense broke and broke and broke as the Gamecocks simply refused to implode on their own — you know, as they do every time they play Vanderbilt. The offense, on the other hand, got very little going, and when it did get something going it couldn’t convert it into points, with two turnovers on downs in the second half and fumbling it right back to South Carolina after the Gamecocks gave them a free shot at the South Carolina 15.

(I will push back on Clark Lea’s reference to this game as a “three-phase ass-kicking,” though, if only to point out that Jesse Mirco did in fact have a good game punting the ball.)

Anyway, the losing streak to South Carolina is now at 16 years and it’s probably good that we have a bye week next week. Then comes LSU and Tennessee. Thankfully, we’re already bowl eligible so we can lose both of those and it not matter.

Individual Stats

Suffice to say, Diego Pavia did not have a good game passing the ball, with the South Carolina defensive line (which is very good) spending most of the day in the backfield. I am not sure Pavia has been sacked twice in a game in a while, which tells you how much pressure South Carolina was getting. There were also a surprising number of passes batted down.

Pavia did break off a couple of big runs on scrambles, including a 17-yard run on 3rd and 8 for Vanderbilt’s only touchdown. The rest of the running game was… not effective. Nate Johnson had a late rushing attempt after Pavia went into the injury tent.

This is the most I can remember Loic Fouonji doing this season. Other than that, there isn’t much noteworthy here. A lot of the “targets” that weren’t catches were uncatchable balls where the official scorer was making his best guess who Pavia was throwing it to.

Defense

Aside from Miles Capers forcing a fumble, there were very few havoc plays on Saturday: Vanderbilt’s defense got just five tackles for loss and four pass breakups. Randon Fontenette and CJ Taylor tied for the team lead with seven total tackles. Maurice Hampton was playing a lot more than I can remember him playing before.

What’s Next

Vanderbilt has a week off before going to Death Valley to play LSU on November 23; game time and TV network are to be announced.