Tennessee had a golden opportunity to put South Carolina inside Williams-Brice Stadium Saturday night.
The Volunteers led by a road touchdown and had the ball at the Gamecocks’ 38-yard line with just 3:38 left. They were facing fourth down, but only needed to gain one yard to maintain their drive that began on their own two-yard line in front of the South Carolina student section.
Josh Heupel trusted its offense to win the first down even though its defense didn’t allow a point in the second half.
“I thought we had something we could get back first, hold it down and clear the clock,” Heupel said in his postgame press conference.
Tennessee was unable to capitalize on the opportunity. It turned football upside down when George MacIntyre was tackled for a loss of one. The second-year quarterback appeared to be going in the wrong direction on the game-changing play, or not handing the football to the right person.
“George misstep on that one,” Heupel said when asked what went wrong on the play that led South Carolina to score 10 points in the final 3:35 to beat No. 11 Tennessee, 27-24.
“Yeah, just a simple miscommunication – a formation we ran the whole game,” MacIntyre added. “I just have to be more attentive to the details of the different plays and this big giant formation.”
The missed play on fourth down was supposed to be similar to the play DaSaahn Brame rushed for a touchdown from a yard out midway through the second quarter. This time, however, MacIntyre moved to his right instead of handing the ball to Brame, who was lined up as a fullback.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of moving parts to the game with the kills and the misses and the fronts they’re going to go through,” MacIntyre said. “But yeah, it would have been similar to DaSaahn’s touchdown in the first half.”
Gn sports
