Tennessee can't get caught looking back at what happened at South Carolina last season

If Tennessee fans have had this date circled on the calendar, that’s fine with Josh Heupel. If they’re still thinking about what happened last time the Vols played South Carolina, that’s just fine. 

“For our fanbase,” Heupel said this week, “if they want to use last year as motivation, I got no problems with that. That’s a great thing about being a fan.”

If anything, the replay of last November at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia still bouncing around in the minds of fans should help No. 21 Tennessee (3-1, 0-1 SEC) when South Carolina (2-2, 1-1) comes to Neyland Stadium for Saturday night’s 7:30 Eastern Time kickoff (TV: SEC Network).

“I expect our stadium to be rocking like it always is,” Heupel said. “It’s going be an electric atmosphere, so if they want to use it, that’s awesome. 

What Heupel has tried to do is caution his team against doing the same. The Vols can’t get caught thinking too much about the past.

“For us,” he said, “it’s about our preparation, how we practice and make sure that we’re in a great competitive spirit (and) mindset as we go take that field Saturday night.”

‘It has nothing to do with what’s gonna happen in this one, good or bad’

At South Carolina last season, Tennessee fans were still watching scores across college football with the one-loss Vols still in the College Football Playoff hunt. Georgia handed Tennessee its first loss two weeks prior, but the four-team playoff field wasn’t completely out of sight.

Then Spencer Rattler threw nearly as many touchdowns (six) as incompletions (seven) as South Carolina derailed No. 5 Tennessee’s season in a 63-38 win. Rattler threw for 438 yards on the night as the Gamecocks scored 28 straight points in the second half to turn a four-point game into a 63-31 game with two minutes left in the fourth quarter.

“It has nothing to do with what’s gonna happen in this one, good or bad,” Heupel said.

South Carolina coach Shane Beamer agreed with Heupel, despite being on the other side of the lopsided score. His team can’t lean too much on the success it had in the last meeting, either. 

“If you’re thinking so much about last year’s game, you’re really not thinking about what you need to do in order to play well in this year’s game,” Beamer said on Wednesday. “Now, don’t get me wrong, are there things that we’re gonna take from last year’s game? Absolutely. 

“I mean, every coordinator — offense, defense and special teams — is basically the same other than our offense, but we’re doing a lot of the same things we were doing last year on offense. So you watch last year’s game for schematic things from a game planning standpoint.”

No. 21 Tennessee vs. South Carolina, Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET, SEC Network

That goes back two seasons for Beamer, too. He watched tape of Tennessee’s 45-20 win over South Carolina the last time the Gamecocks came to Knoxville. 

“We watched the 2021 game,” Beamer said, “as ugly as it was and took things from that. So that’s one thing. Two, there’s a lot of the same players. We’ve graduated and lost a lot of guys, so have they, but there’s a lot of guys that played in that game that will be playing on Saturday night. 

“So certainly you can watch things from a personnel standpoint as well. But if we just sit there and say, okay, we played really well against them last year and just go do what we did last year, you know, there’s a lot that’s changed. That’s our mindset.”

Mindset is paramount. The team with the better mindset, forgetting what happened the last time these two teams met and focusing on the present, has the better chance of winning. 

“It’s to me,” Heupel said, “the team that wins this game is the team that plays the smartest, which means you gotta be in control of your emotions. It also speaks to your preparation and what you need to do during the course of the week to be able to play your best and not be out there strictly thinking. 

“Just you’re seeing things, you’re anticipating and you’re playing with great fundamentals. And I think it’s really important that your players stay engaged during the course of the week to be at their best.”