After a couple of midweek wins against Appalachian State and Charleston Southern, the Gamecocks get ready to travel up to Kentucky for the 3rd time in four years, as mentioned by Connor Tapp and The Feathered Warrior. Kentucky looks to be a surprisingly difficult series as the Wildcats are the nation's only remaining undefeated team.(h/t to C&F at TSK) That's right, not Stanford, or South Carolina, or Florida, the top 3 in the polls, but Kentucky. The link that I just mentioned explains that Kentucky may not have had the strongest opponents on the diamond, but they appear to be a balanced team.

With the Florida Gators coming to town next weekend, here's to hoping that the Gamecocks stay focused on the undefeated Kentucky Wildcats and take care of business this weekend, before hosting the Gators the 23rd-25th at Carolina Stadium.

Go 'Cocks!

The key principle of Ash Wednesday is to remind us that we came from Ash, and to Ash we shall return. Well, yesterday, February 22, 2012 all of my teams seemed to be returning to ash. It was a nice long day yesterday, work, followed by church, followed by a meeting followed by sports misery. What a sharp contrast that is to the party in NOLA.

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Winning the SEC East is more important that beating Clemson.  Once, twice or three times in a row.  While it sure feels good, it's obvious that the East is more important.  Why?  No one cares about us.  At least that's the way it feels.  I feel like we are just a story that gets buried behind LSU-Bama(can't blame 'em there...), Arkansas being the third best and unfortunately behind a team that we beat in UGA.  We are ranked higher, as is Arkansas higher than us, but are now just in the backseat.  Here's what I have noticed:

1. We beat our rival from the same conference as UGA's rival, be we won in a larger margin of victory.

2.  We got to 10 wins for the 2nd time in the history of our school, LSU: I know you're undefeated first time in history, respect, but at least you are rightfully being discussed.

3. We get no Helmet Stickers from Chris Low.

4. Most importantly, we get no mention in the what we learned column.  Hey Chris, how about we learned the HBC can still coach, even with injuries and dismissals?  How about we learned Connor Shaw can still play QB against a team with a lot of talent?  Let's be honest, Clemmy has some athletes on D and Connor played a great game running and throwing.  But UGA gets mentioned by C. Low.  He praises the level of football they are playing to finish the year.... did you see that UK game?  I know Kentucky just beat Tennessee for the first time in 24 years.... but really?  UGA is still inconsistent and to offer blanket praise completely ignores what they did one week ago.  To any UGA fans, I know you have won ten straight and throttled a team that beat us at home, but if you're ok with the mystery of which team will show up next week.... pass me a glass of what you're drinking.

It's for all of these reasons that Spurrier is right.  The East is important.  The most important goal on our schedule, because it makes us more relevant.  While I'm thrilled to have beaten teams like UT, UF, UGA and CU all in the same year (again) the East is priority number 1.  Thanks to the HBC for changing the culture.  That doesn't take away from the accomplishments from this group of players.  Actually, this bunch of guys seems like they will use this as motivation for 2012.  Now for god's sake, win the darn bowl game!!

GO COCKS!!

I just wish I could say it wasn't true.  I wish that we had lost to Petrino the NSFW.  But it happened.  And oddly, that was not the worst part of the weekend for me.  No, my weekend was far more interesting than it needed to be.  And it wasn't because of over zealous UGA fans celebrating our loss and their assumption of the SEC East driver's seat.  It was a head injury.

I started my day by playing rugby.  Went a lot like the Carolina game actually.  Promising start and then mental mistakes and poor execution let the flood gates open.  Then tragedy (Connor Shaw concussion), well in my case I broken a bone in my head.  After a head-on collision with an opponent I fractured the bone just above my eyeball on the frontal bone. 

When it happened, I reached up with my hand to survey the damage by touch.  Pulled my hand away and saw a little bit of blood, but something felt funny.  So I reached up again and ran my finger along the bone, and felt a small dimple, then I checked against my other eye.... no dimple.  Something is definitely wrong.  While play was still going on, I walked calmly and directly to the sideline and off of the field.  Some of my teammates told me that the cut "isn't that bad" and to "just put a band-aid on it, you'll be alright".  My girlfriend comes running over, hysterical, naturally, and asks me what happened and is everything ok.  I said to her, "we need to get to the hospital".

That was enough for her. She runs to get my bag and we start heading off to the hospital.  The next 2 hours were a lot of worrying and boredom.  Couldn't find the remote for the tv in the hospital room, my eye was swelling shut and they were saying something about needing a plastic surgeon to repair my orbital(thankfully this turned out to be incorrect). 

Finally we leave, and remember that this is on a Saturday, and we have to pay a parking attendant to leave and don't have any cash and they don't accept credit cards.  On a Saturday, really?  My girlfriend is trying to scratch up as much loose change as possible to cover the debt, meanwhile I'm trying to haggle with the guy.  The conversation goes like this:

Attendant: "That'll be $4.00"

Me:  "what? But it's Saturday..."

Attendant:  (blank stare, unphased) "$4.00"

me:  "credit card ok?"

Attendant: "no, cash only"

Me:  "oh come on, I just broke my face, I've been in there for 2 hours, my eye is swelling shut and i can barely see"

Attendant:  (looks annoyed, raises gate and points to drive through)

And then I got to go home and watch Carolina lose.  I am apparently too dumb to know my limits, because I still want to play rugby, but my girlfriend and my parents(I'm 28 years old people) are strongly opposed.  Maybe that's why I'm a Carolina fan.  Bad things happen, my favorite team hurts me and I just keep coming back for more.  I'll be on my way to Columbia tomorrow with quite a hefty black eye.  I just want us to beat Florida.  Don't hurt me, Carolina., please, don't hurt me.

Happy Halloween, Ryan Succop.  The former South Carolina kicker knocked a 30-yard field goal last night to seal an overtime win for the Kansas City Chiefs vs the San Diego Chargers.

Highlight of the kick from NFL.com

Succop is making this a regular occurrence.  This is his second Overtime game-winning field goal on Halloween in as many years. He did the same thing last year, when the Chiefs beat the Buffalo Bills.  Good to see Ryan Succop doing well for himself.

Mr. Irrelevant is apparently very relevant.

Go 'Cocks!!

With it being a bye week and not much else to talk about; well, unless you want to dwell on Life without Marcus Lattimore or maybe we could talk about Mizzou  and other conference realignment topics.  But I thought the downtime would be a good opportunity to let you know about how my Saturday went down.  First, this is the second week in a row that playing rugby has interfered with watching South Carolina play at 12:21 on the SEC Digital Network.

I left my house during the second quarter.  Actually, the last play of the game that I watched live with the interception thrown by Shaw in the end zone.  And boy did that really set the tone for the rest of the day.

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I like many others have been calling for Spurrier to give Shaw a chance to show what he can do.  Shaw has received limited playing time and often in unusual situations.  Often times it has been later in the game, but with the East Carolina game he started the season under center before being replaced by Stephen Garcia in the second quarter. 

So, let's see what we are working with here with a little statistical analysis of Connor Shaw and Stephen Garcia.  In case anyone is wondering I used stats from ESPN mostly, for the fumbles I used TeamRankings.com. 

Stats after the jump

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