'One of the more undervalued teams': OU head coach Brett Venables speaks highly of South Carolina

The road only gets tougher from here for Oklahoma. As if a 31-point loss to arch-nemesis Texas wasn’t enough last week, the Sooners will still play four more top 20 teams before season’s end.

But before then, Oklahoma has, at least for the moment, a more even matchup against South Carolina on Saturday (12:45 p.m., SECN). Much like the Sooners, the Gamecocks are coming off a gut-wrenching loss where they took Alabama down to the wire.

This weekend will be a big one for both teams being in similar spots and badly needing a win. The Sooners are currently a 1.5-point favorite in this game. Though, OU head coach Brett Venables knows South Carolina well enough to where it won’t go down without a fight.

“Going into the year, I said that at some point in time that I felt they were one of the more undervalued teams of the teams on our schedule, based on what they had coming back, what they had recruited, where they were as a football team coming out of out of the spring,” said Venables, who was Clemson’s defensive coordinator from 2012-21.

“They had a rough start in their opener against ODU. But other than that, man, they’ve played really well. A year ago, they weren’t great on the road, and in two games this year at both at Kentucky and at the University of Alabama, they gave themselves a chance to win. They got after Kentucky really good.”

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When Venables was with the Tigers, his defenses gave up an average of 18 points in the nine games he coached against the Gamecocks. But even with a strong defense this year in Norman, he knows it’s going to be tough to stop starting quarterback LaNorris Sellers.

“I really like Sellers,” Venables said. “He’s a tough guy that players really follow him. He’s playing at a better level this week than he was at the beginning of the year. Watched him get better and better as the season has gone along.”

Venables spoke very highly of Sellers’ abilities during his Tuesday press conference. He labeled the redshirt freshman as someone who can “take it to the house at any point in time” and “run through trash.”

“They have quarterback designed plays and then he can improvise when things break down,” the third-year head coach said. “He makes a lot of plays on the perimeter with his eyes down the field. Has created explosive plays by doing so.”

In a game like this, it has the potential to be a real battle between two great defenses. South Carolina and Oklahoma are each similar in that the defense is the strength of the team. From all the times Venables has coached against the Gamecocks, this year’s group is the best he’s seen.

“That’s the best defense that I’ve seen from them since I’ve followed them closely. They’re really good. They’re fast, they’re long, they’re explosive, they’re explosive, and they’re deep. And so, they’re playing at a really high level defensively,” Venables said.

“Again, they have eight starters coming back on defense. As a team, they didn’t play great against Ole Miss, but they held Ole Miss in check offensively. Their defense did the same again, 27 points each, which is really good considering those two offenses and how explosive they are. They’ve forced 12 turnovers on defense which ranked second in the conference and 12th nationally.”

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The Sooners have been in a little bit of a spiral lately after starting out the year 3-0. They’ve lost two of their last three games to Tennessee and Texas, with a close win over Auburn sandwiched in between.

While Oklahoma desperately needs to win this game, so does South Carolina, who has lost three of its last four games. Venables expects this weekend in Norman to be a tough challenge. But that’s what every week in the SEC is.

“There ain’t no gimmes in this conference and certainly on the schedule,” he said. “We’re gonna have to play well, gonna have to play better in all the areas that we’ve already talked about. This is a team that, you know, they’re very similar to us in a lot of spaces, if you look at it on paper. And this is a really talented group that’ll be coming in here this weekend.”

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