Nyck Harbor's confidence trending up after Saturday's game ball performance

Nyck Harbor walked into the media room with LaNorris Sellers on Saturday holding a football in his hands. As Sellers was being asked the first couple of questions, Harbor waited for someone to ask him why he was cradling a football.

The football Harbor held on to was a game ball he received after South Carolina’s dramatic 34-30 win over Missouri. So, when he inevitably was asked about it, the sophomore wide receiver had a big smile on his face.

“I ain’t ever got one of these before. I’m going to keep this special for me,” Harbor said on the game ball.

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It was a well-deserved honor for Harbor after another great performance. He caught two passes for 69 yards and a touchdown, which gave South Carolina its first lead of the game in the first quarter.

After Missouri went down the field and kicked a field goal to open the game, the Gamecocks quickly responded and got deep into plus territory within their first five plays.

Then on the sixth play, Harbor ran a routine go route but no one was covering him. Sellers saw him on the left side racing to the end zone and threw a perfect over the shoulder pass for a 26-yard touchdown.

“Missouri, they blitzed the corner. The safety was playing a little low. He didn’t get over. I guess he was supposed to get over and shell that side,” Harbor said, explaining what happened on that play. “But I outran the safety. 16 threw a good ball and the ball fell in my hands and now we’re here with it.”

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Later in the game, South Carolina faced 3rd and 5 at midfield with a little over two minutes remaining before halftime. Harbor made a quick stutter step move, ran a fade route to create separation and hauled in a 43-yard catch, which led to a Josh Simon six-yard touchdown on the next play.

“Any ball in the air is my ball. My ball. Nobody else’s ball,” Harbor said. “… Hey, the ball in the air is coming to me. It’s mine no matter what.”

Slowly but surely, the pieces have started coming together for the former five-star recruit. His coaches and teammates had been raving for weeks about the way he played during practice. And recently, it’s translating into the real games where he’s now a dependable target in the offense.

Over his last four games, Harbor has caught nine passes for 165 yards and two touchdowns. This was just about as much production as he had in an entire season as a freshman last year. Now, he’s showing that he can make the consistent plays when his team needs him to.

“Just all the hard work I’ve been putting in, it’s starting to show on the field. Everything starting to slow down,” he said. “I just go out there, just do it for 16, just do it for my teammates, do it for the offense, defense — complimentary football.”

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Even when the ball wasn’t coming to him every play, it still found him in unique ways from time to time, like when he took a reverse handoff from Juju McDowell on a kickoff late in Saturday’s game to set the Gamecocks up with decent field position for what would be the game-winning touchdown drive.

“We worked on it a lot. That’s a little height difference between me and (McDowell),” Harbor said, comparing his 6-foot-5 frame to 5-foot-9 McDowell. “But at the biggest time on the biggest stage, we made it work. We executed it real well, so I’m proud of him. Just proud of the whole kickoff coverage team.”

While they worked on this trick play in practice, doing it in the middle of a game, one in which South Carolina trailed by three points, had head coach Shane Beamer holding his breath. But when they pulled it off and Harbor ran for 20 yards, he let out a sigh of relief.

“Juju is not the biggest guy in the world and Nyck is not the smallest guy in the world. Some of the exchanges have been a little off where it is too high or too low,” Beamer said. “That is something that we had been working for the last few weeks and felt like it was a good time to call just to give us some field position and get the drive going.”

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