South Carolina Must Refocus For Vanderbilt

With their loss on Saturday, the South Carolina Gamecocks have suddenly gone from a team riding a wave of momentum to one looking to avoid a carryover effect.

South Carolina's winning streak of four games was effectively stonewalled with their loss to the Missouri Tigers on Saturday, and the concerning part might not be the mere fact that the Gamecocks lost the game but more so the way they lost. 

Despite the game at one point being a one-score contest late in the third quarter, anyone who watched the game from beginning to end could tell that besides their first drive on offense, the Tigers had a profound stranglehold on the game to where it seemed like the Gamecocks were actually down by more than what the scoreboard indicated.

Then came the postgame press conferences, where head coach Shane Beamer and four South Carolina players took the podium for questions. Based on the body language and responses to the questions, the group seemed dejected and upset over the loss. 

Of course, this is the kind of response that fans would want to see their team's players exude after losing a game, but the issue with this kind of emotional response is that there's a two-way street in terms of how you handle moments and emotions like this. It's what separates good athletes from average ones, and the same goes for sports teams.

If South Carolina can find a way to stomach the loss against Missouri in a healthy manner and do some self-introspection to see where they can make quick fixes, then they should have no problem bouncing back against a team in Vanderbilt who's 3-5 on the season and has lost thirteen games in a row to the Gamecocks. 

There's another scenario that could play out here because if the Gamecocks allow the sting of the Missouri loss to linger in the locker room, then this loss against the Tigers could snowball. 

The Commodores are a much-improved squad in 2022 despite not having the record to indicate it, and this is the same team that last season took South Carolina down to the wire in Williams-Brice to the point that the Gamecocks had to score a go-ahead touchdown in the final moments to escape with the victory. 

Needless to say, this game should be treated with the utmost importance by the team and fans alike because otherwise, they could be in for a potentially shocking outcome on Saturday night.

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