Scott Davis: In the final round, Gamecocks deliver a knockout punch

Scott Davis has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter year-round (sign up here) and a column during football season that’s published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com.

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These are the games that try a fan’s soul.

Back and forth, up and down, black becomes white becomes black again, the merry-go-round spins, the heart sinks and soars.

These are the games when your Emotional Meter is pinned all the way into the red for so long that the Warning Light comes on. My friends, how will we ever recover from what we just saw transpire at Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday?

On a weekend when a 58-year-old former champion and a twentysomething YouTube influencer fought in front of an audience of millions, South Carolina and Missouri provided the true heavyweight bout.

This was a good, old-fashioned SEC bloodbath, two Top 25 teams scrapping like crazed warriors, laying everything on the line, taking punches and throwing punches. It was a game where you could never really understand what you were feeling – in some ways it started to seem like feelings had been annihilated completely.

Here’s a quick summary of my emotional state across four quarters: I feel OK…well, I feel good…I’m OK…no wait, I feel reaaaaaaaaaaallly good..honestly, I’ve never felt this good…ugh, I just feel OK…I do feel a little bit better now, yes…what is this, am I OK?…are you OK?…ohmyGodno…I can’t…why us? why?…OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!…I’m not crying, you’re crying.

In a season when the South Carolina Gamecocks have delivered so many impressive performances, Saturday’s epic 34-30 comeback win over Mizzou was its most impressive.

It was the one we will remember the most, the one that required the most work, the most grit, the most resilience, the one that required you to get up off the mat and throw one…more…punch.

Momentum – sliding away from the Gamecocks for most of the second half – had firmly and seemingly completely been wrested away by Missouri when the Tigers’ all-everything receiver Luther Burden snagged a touchdown pass with a minute remaining. A lesser team tosses the towel into the ring at that very moment, as they watched Burden and his teammates dancing and making shushing signs to the stunned South Carolina crowd.

That was the moment when most of us in the stands or in front of our television sets were flashing back to that September day against LSU, to all of those games across all of the years that felt snatched away from us at the decisive hour.

But this is not a lesser team. And this was not an ordinary game.

This was a throwback to the glory days of prizefighting, to Ali and Frazier and Foreman, when gladiators entered the ring and assaulted and bloodied each other to the end until both competitors were barely standing. If Ali and Frazier had the Thrilla in Manila, this was the Brawl in the Brice. And it wasn’t over.

No one was lost this football game.

South Carolina simply won it.

It’s not that Missouri didn’t do enough to win. It’s that South Carolina did one more thing to finish.

This was a game when South Carolina absorbed the very best effort from a bruising, physical SEC opponent and did one more thing to win the football game. By the time it was over, and the shock of watching Gamecock hero Rocket Sanders literally carry Missouri defenders on his back into the end zone for a winning touchdown, I felt like I’d just fought 12 rounds myself. And I was much worse for the wear.

But South Carolina’s season felt like it was just getting started, 10 games in.

How far can this thing go? Who can ever doubt this team again?

Ladies and gentlemen, South Carolina was on the mat.

They were on the mat on Saturday night, and the referee was counting to ten and he was looking down, and he was asking, “Can you get up? Can you get up?”

And do you know what this team did?
They stumbled to their feet, they held themselves upright, they looked him and all the rest of us and the whole college football world in the eyes, and they said it.

Yes, we can.

Can you get up?

Yes, we can.

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The LaNorris Sellers Game Balls of the Week

Batman has an origin story and Superman has an origin story and college football legends have origin stories, too. If LaNorris Sellers goes on to become a South Carolina legend, then his performance against the Missouri Tigers on Saturday will represent the moment he became LANORRIS SELLERS in all-caps. Let’s toss out a Ball to…

LaNorris Sellers – South Carolina’s suffocating defense was facing its most difficult test of the season against a rejuvenated and powerful Missouri offensive front. The Gamecock running game was faltering in the second half. And so Sellers did what we ask winning SEC quarterbacks to do: He went out there and pushed his team across the finish line, throwing for 353 yards and a staggering five touchdowns. The fact that he had to overcome an interception made the performance even more impressive – his endurance in the face of adversity was representative of what the team as a whole achieved on this unforgettable night.

Rocket’s Run – In just a single season, Rocket Sanders has already cemented his legacy as an all-time South Carolina fan favorite, and after he dragged half of Missouri’s defense into the end zone with him to secure the Gamecocks’ improbable win with 15 seconds left, he’s drifting up into “I need to buy that guy’s jersey” territory for many fans. I’ve been watching South Carolina football for many decades, and I’m not sure I can recall a singular moment quite like that, when one player simply announced to the viewing audience, “I am not allowing my football team to lose tonight.” There was something weirdly moving about seeing that effort unfold in real time. It inspired two great calls on the night, which leads us to…

“THE BUILDING IS LITERALLY SHAKING!!!” – The SEC Network’s Tom Hart seemed almost at a loss for words after Sanders’ race to glory, shouting “The building is literally shaking!!!” And speaking of excitement…

Todd and Tommy – I love these two guys. I always have. These are exactly the two people I want in my radio announcing booth for South Carolina games. Their fourth quarter radio call started making the social media rounds after the game, and when Todd screams, “TOUCHDOWN CAROLINA! TOUCHDOWN ROCKET SANDERS!” you can almost hear his voice starting to break. Suddenly Tommy shouts, “WHOA! YEAH!” like I would have done as a 10-year-old fan watching the 1984 Gamecocks. These two dudes always put me in touch with the kid inside me who loved South Carolina more than just about anything, and I’m grateful to them for doing it. Speaking of grateful…

Shanevember – Beamer in November is becoming a thing. South Carolina always seems to play its best football in November under Shane Beamer, and with wins over Texas A&M, Vandy and Missouri now in the books this November, it’s happening again. It’s another Shanevember in Columbia. Speaking of Shane…

Beamer’s Ascendance as “The Man” at South Carolina, Part Two – I wrote last week that by getting the Gamecocks bowl eligible against a gruesome schedule this season, Beamer had officially confirmed himself as The Head Dude in Charge on into the future for the South Carolina program. And after this? We can release all those old anxieties that caused us to start nervously chattering about “hot seats” and “viable alternatives” and all that other junk that we’d engage in whenever the Gamecocks played a bad first half. This is the guy.

Me, for Actually Making an Accurate Prediction for a Change – Back during the bye, I wrote, “Won’t South Carolina need to make something happen offensively to succeed over the next few weeks?” Saturday night, they needed the offense to go win a ballgame for them. And that’s exactly what happened.

My Grudging Respect for Missouri as a Worthy SEC Adversary – I was one of those annoying twits who “wasn’t sure Missouri belonged in the Southeastern Conference” when the Tigers joined the league back in 2012. But over the years, they’ve moved beyond merely having my attention to becoming one of my most dreaded opponents. Mizzou is consistently one of the toughest games on South Carolina’s yearly schedule. They always seem to feature punishing lines, dynamic offenses and tough-nosed defenses. I hate these guys. I loathe Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz (who inspired my wife to blurt, “Wow, he really does have a punchable face” when Drinkwitz was shown on TV). That’s why I’m happy to see…

The Mayor’s Cup Back in the Real Columbia – I love the Mayor’s Cup. It was created for a single reason: To make hardcore fans like me care about a game between two teams who had no previous history. It worked. I hate Missouri, I love watching the Gamecocks carrying the Cup off the field, and I’m genuinely fascinated by how much I’ve grown to care about this rivalry.

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The “If Only We’d Finished Off Those LSU and Alabama Games, We’d Be Talking About the College Football Playoff Right About Now” Deflated Balls of the Week

“If Only We’d Finished Off Those LSU and Alabama Games, We’d Be Talking About the College Football Playoff Right About Now” – Is something all of us are saying for the third consecutive week.

Missouri’s Premature Celebrations – Boy, that Missouri sideline sure did feel confident they’d wrapped up a sixth consecutive win in the series after Burden’s touchdown, didn’t they? That was a gyrating, yapping group of guys who seemed to feel a burning need to let Gamecock fans know it was over. I understand – it was an exciting moment in an exciting game. But the premature victory dancing made it even more enjoyable to see the Tigers trotting off the field with heads hanging down as the Gamecock players were posing for selfies with the Mayor’s Cup.

How had we gotten to that moment?

In the end, South Carolina’s vaunted defense had taken its most sustained series of punches in weeks, left dazed by a second-half onslaught from Missouri’s quick-moving offense. But this was a night for resilience, for taking punches and getting back up and throwing more punches of your own.

This was the night this Gamecock team – this unforgettable, unyielding team – was asked, again and again: Can you get up?

And the answer, again and again, was always the same.

Yes.

Yes, we can.

Tell me how you’re feeling about the Brawl at the Brice by writing me at [email protected].

[See what other Gamecock fans are saying about the South Carolina-Missouri football game on The Insiders Forum!]