Notebook: Shorthanded defense dominates South Carolina
When South Carolina took over possession with about two and a half minutes remaining in Saturday’s game, Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz offered David Gibbs an apology. Drinkwitz hadn’t wanted to put Gibbs and the Missouri defense in this situation, allowing South Carolina a possession on which it could tie the game. Gibbs, leading a depleted defense and himself filling in for defensive coordinator Ryan Walters, who didn’t travel to Saturday’s game due to COVID-19 contact tracing, replied through his headset and told Drinkwitz not to fear.
“He said, ‘don’t worry about it,’” Drinkwitz recalled, “‘we’re going to get a turnover right here.’”
A few plays later, Gibbs would be proven right. Sophomore linebacker Devin Nicholson jumped in front of a pass from South Carolina backup quarterback Luke Doty, securing his first career interception and capping off a sterling performance by the Tiger defense. In its first game in 21 days, Missouri beat South Carolina 17-10 to improve its record to 3-3 on the season.
“Just really an awesome performance all the way around,” Drinkwitz said after the game. “Obviously we didn’t do what we needed to do in the second half offensively to put the game away, but we found a way to win, and that’s what you have to do.”
After Missouri’s game against Georgia scheduled for last Saturday was postponed due to a combination of positive COVID-19 tests and contact tracing, which decimated the Missouri defensive line, this week’s matchup also looked to be in jeopardy. Drinkwitz revealed that Missouri actually suited up 52 scholarship players, one beneath the SEC threshold allowing teams to petition for a no contest.
The defensive line and secondary were hit particularly hard. Defensive linemen Markell Utsey, Kobie Whiteside and Trajan Jeffcoat, all of whom have started at least one game this season, sat out due to either quarantine or injury. Walk-on Cannon York, who had played just 16 defensive snaps in his college career, drew the start at defensive end. Cornerbacks Adam Sparks and Ishmael Burdine were both unavailable as well. Throw in the fact that Walters has spent the past 13 days quarantined away from the team, and a matchup with a South Carolina offense that racked up 548 yards and 42 points a week prior appeared daunting.
But Gibbs, who has spent 10 seasons as a college defensive coordinator at Texas Tech, Houston and Minnesota, pushed all the right buttons, and his limited personnel responded. Entering the game, the top priority for the Tigers was slowing down Gamecock running back Kevin Harris. Harris entered the week ranked second in the SEC in both rushing yards and rushing touchdowns, trailing only Alabama’s Najee Harris. Three times this season, he’s averaged more than eight yards per carry. He torched Ole Miss a week ago for 243 yards and five touchdowns on the ground.
Missouri largely succeeded in bottling Harris up. He ran for just 58 yards on 16 attempts. Linebacker Nick Bolton, who continued his All-America-caliber season with 14 tackles, including two for loss, said the key to doing so was not setting the edges and forcing him to try to run into the middle of the defense.
“It was big for us to make him stop and restart, and make him go lateral,” Bolton explained. “... Most of his runs come from going off the edge of the defense, for soft edges, so we made it a premium that we weren't going to allow him to do that, force him to bring the ball up the middle. We kind of wrapped him up early, got a couple (tackles for loss) as well, kind of discouraged him from running the ball.”
By holding Harris in check, Missouri forced South Carolina to try to beat it through the air without leading receiver Shi Smith, who left the game on the first possession and didn’t return. Starting quarterback Collin Hill couldn’t answer the challenge. Hill completed just six of 10 passes for 39 yards. Missouri sacked him twice, too, with sophomore safety Martez Manuel creating the pressure both times. Both Drinkwitz and Bolton said after the game that, due to the Tigers’ lack of available pass rusher, Gibbs made a point of bringing pressure from the back seven. Missouri’s three sacks in the game came from a safety, a linebacker and a cornerback.
“Thought we would incorporate some different ways to get pressure on the quarterback,” Drinkwitz said, “and we did.”
The Gamecock offense as a whole mustered just 68 total yards and never crossed the 30-yard-line of Missouri during the first half. The Tigers’ biggest stop came late in the second quarter, after quarterback Connor Bazelak underthrew Tauskie Dove, resulting in a Cam Smith interception. The play had the makings of a momentum swing, as Missouri had been in position to at least kick a field goal before receiving the ball to start the second half. But the Tiger defense stuffed Harris for a four-yard loss on first down and South Carolina couldn’t recover. The Gamecocks punted the ball back to Missouri with 90 seconds left in the first half, and the Tigers kicked a field goal to take a 17-0 lead into the locker room.
A quarterback change injected a bit of life into South Carolina’s offense after the break. Doty took over for Hill and led South Carolina to its first points, a 47-yard field goal by Parker White. He remained behind center for the rest of the game, and his athleticism gave Missouri some problems. Doty ran for 59 yards and completed several passes after using his legs to escape pressure.
Doty made the game interesting when he led a 13-play, 77-yard drive that ended with Deshaun Fenwick scoring from a yard out. With just under five minutes to play, South Carolina had cut Missouri’s lead to one score, no doubt prompting flashbacks of the fourth-quarter comeback led by Connor Shaw in 2013 among Tiger fans.
Missouri’s offense managed one first down on its ensuing possession, but when Drinkwitz “tried to end the game,” dialing up a pass to tight end Niko Hea on a wheel route on third down and six that fell incomplete, South Carolina had its first chance to tie the game since midway through the second quarter. A perfect punt from senior Grant McKinniss pinned the Gamecocks at their own one-yard line, but still, Drinkwitz felt the need to apologize to Gibbs, asking the defense to come up with one more stop.
Doty hit Josh Vann for 16 yards on a key third-down conversion, but other than that, South Carolina moved the ball methodically. When the clock ticked under a minute remaining, it became clear they would have to start throwing downfield. Missouri was ready. Nicholson read Doty’s eyes and darted in front of his pass over the middle. He celebrated by donning the team’s new turnover robe as his teammates mobbed him on the Tiger sideline.
“We knew they were going to have to take a shot eventually, just trying to gain 20-plus yards, and coach Gibbs had a great call,” Bolton said. “Everybody did their assignments and forced them to throw the ball in the middle of the field. He didn’t get enough air underneath it, we had somebody underneath and over the top.”
“Last time I saw Devin he was running around in the turnover robe,” Drinkwitz said with a laugh. “So tremendous job.”
All in all, Missouri held South Carolina to 283 yards and 10 points. The Gamecocks entered Saturday averaging 370 yards and 23 points per contest. That’s a testament to Gibbs, who Drinkwitz said “did everything right” in his new role, and to the players who picked up the slack with so many absent.
“We got 52 scholarship players, man,” Drinkwitz said. “I mean, that’s a (Division) I-AA roster, and our guys are fighting to give it everything they got. Nick Bolton’s playing every snap, our d-line’s giving us everything they got. We started two true freshmen at corner tonight. To be where we’re at is a tribute to our players, it’s a tribute to our seniors and it’s a tribute to our staff for just fighting.”
Offense sputters behind depleted line
While the Missouri offense wasn’t hit as hard by quarantines and injuries as the defense from a sheer number perspective, the offensive line might have been the team’s thinnest position group against South Carolina. Missouri took the field without starting right tackle Larry Borom and starting left guard Xavier Delgado, both of whom dressed Saturday but were only healthy enough to play in case of emergency. Delgado and Borom left the Kentucky game on Oct. 24 due to injury and haven’t returned to the lineup. Delgado’s backup at left tackle, Dylan Spencer, wasn’t available, either, which forced redshirt freshman Luke Griffin into the starting spot. Prior to Saturday, Griffin had played just one offensive snap all season.
It might not come as a surprise, then, that the unit struggled a bit. Missouri mustered just 98 yards on the ground, averaging less than three yards per rush for the second game in a row. Bazelak also got sacked once. Drinkwitz acknowledged that, “offensive line-wise, we’re not where we need to be.”
“Quite honestly, we couldn’t run the ball, and we weren’t effective on third down because their pass rush was pressuring the quarterback,” Drinkwitz said. “So we’ll have to go back and look at it and figure out where we got to adjust.”
As was the case with South Carolina, the lack of an effective run game put extra pressure on the shoulders of Bazelak. While the redshirt freshman made a few impressive plays, such as a 20-yard touchdown pass to Dove over a defender, he struggled at times with both accuracy and decision-making. Drinkwitz said he would have to watch film of the game to provide a full critique of his quarterback, but he noted at least one error in each category. Both, interestingly, came in red zone situations during the first half, despite the fact that Missouri didn’t score in the second.
“I know right before half he can’t throw the swing route when there’s 13 seconds left,” Drinkwitz said. “He’s gotta wait. Had both slicers open for a touchdown. ... We can’t throw an interception in the red zone. I mean, the ball’s on the 23-yard line, he threw it to the two. So that’s a pretty terrible throw.”
Rountree cements spot in record books
Larry Rountree III entered Saturday needing just 19 yards to become Missouri’s all-time leading rusher by a non-quarterback. It took him eight carries, but he reached that mark in the second quarter, officially passing Zack Abron’s mark of 3,198 career rushing yards.
Rountree has said repeatedly this season he cares more about winning games than individual accolades, and he said after the game it feels “weird” to be the most productive Missouri running back ever. “I still don’t believe it,” he said. He offered a shoutout to his offensive line, both past and present, for paving his way to the mark.
Bolton had perhaps the highest praise for Rountree after the game.
“Grit, perseverance, that’s two things that for me describe Larry Rountree to a tee,” Bolton said. “He doesn’t get too down, never going to dwell on lulls, he’s always trying to come in every day, put in work, try to improve himself so that he can have a better performance on Saturdays for our team.”
Rountree finished the game with 58 yards and a touchdown. He now sits at 3,283 rushing yards in his college career. Former quarterback Brad Smith is still more than 1,000 yards clear of Rountree for the school’s all-time leading rusher mark with 4,289.
McKinniss comes up clutch
While Nicholson’s interception will be remembered as the game-winning play for Missouri, another, just as critical one came from an unlikely hero: McKinniss. With fewer than three minutes remaining, after the pass to Hea fell incomplete, Missouri faced a fourth down and six from the South Carolina 36. Drinkwitz might have been tempted to go for the first down and the win, but he opted to trust his defense — and his graduate transfer punter.
McKinniss delivered, launching a high boot that bounced inside the 10-yard line and rolled to the one, where it was downed by a Missouri player. The clutch kick, which ensured the Gamecocks would have to travel 99 yards to tie the game, was just part of a stellar night for McKinniss. Missouri’s offensive struggles kept him busy — he punted seven times, averaging 43.6 yards per kick. None of his punts bounced into the end zone, while five were downed inside the 15-yard line, including two at the one. That played a big role in South Carolina’s average starting field position being its own 15-yard line, while Missouri’s was its own 37 — a significant factor during a game in which points were at a premium.
“That’s why you recruit him,” Drinkwitz said of McKinniss. “That’s why you get him here, and you beg him to come back for next year, too.”
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