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Early-season game predictions

USC vs. Southern Miss – Thursday The Gamecocks didn’t receive any favors when North Carolina bailed out on USC to play LSU in Atlanta. ESPN officials helped USC land Southern Miss as a replacement, arguably a tougher opening-game draw for the Gamecocks than N.C. State the past two seasons. The Golden Eagles were picked by [...]

Camp review: Good, bad and ugly

(A version of the following ran in Monday’s editions, but figured I’d include it here for reader comments on what the Gamecocks need to accomplish over the next 10 days.) Preseason camp is over, classes have started, and South Carolina opens its season Sept. 2 against Southern Miss. The State examines the highs and lows [...]

Players pay up and leave local hotel

Thursday was moving day at South Carolina as a number of additional players moved out of the Whitney Hotel a week after NCAA investigators questioned their living arrangements there. Tight end Weslye Saunders, whose alleged dealings with agents drew the attention of the NCAA, was one of the players told to vacate the property. Officials [...]

QB battle heats up

Remember last spring when Steve Spurrier was calling out Stephen Garcia any chance he got while mentioning Connor Shaw as a viable backup quarterback who would push Garcia? The armchair psychologists, this one included, surmised that Spurrier was trying to get in Garcia’s head to make sure the Tampa right-hander did not go through the [...]

Scrimmage No. 1 a sack-fest

Not going to try to do any in-depth scrimmage analysis here, since South Carolina’s players already had their shoulder pads off and were finishing their conditioning by the time the media was allowed into Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday. But one stat jumped out from Steve Spurrier’s post-scrimmage debriefing: Starting quarterback Stephen Garcia was sacked “about [...]