South Carolina Gamecocks Football Feeds at MentalBreeze.com

This post begins a series previewing each of our 2013 opponents. We begin with our opening contest, which is against the North Carolina Tarheels.

This game is of interest primarily because of the colors the opponent is wearing, not how good it is. USC fans have been clamoring for a return visit from our former ACC rivals ever since UNC won a narrow contest in Chapel Hill during the 2007 season, so fan interest should be relatively high for this game. However, USC should win this one. We're currently a 12 1/2-point favorite in the game, which should give you an idea of how the two teams stack up against each other.

That's not to say that UNC is chopped liver. In his first season, Larry Fedora successfully installed his spread offense. Fedora's spread is premised on a rush-pass balance and incorporates the no-huddle. It was one of the most prolific offenses in the nation last year, helping the Tarheels to a somewhat surprising 8-4 record in what was supposed to be a building year for the new coach. This year, Fedora returns some weapons to play with in All-ACC QB Bryn Renner and South Carolina-product WR Quinshad Davis.

However, the first bit of bad news for UNC is that it while it returns Renner, Davis, and some more talent at receiver, it loses one of the keys to its success, an elite offensive line, a few players of which will be playing on Sundays next year. Fedora will be breaking in a very young group up front this year, which will put him at a disadvantage against USC's stellar defensive line. The Tarheels also lose All-ACC RB Giovanni Bernard, although it should be said that they return a couple of backs who did well spelling Bernard last year.

The second bit of bad news for UNC is that Heels lose a lot of talent up front from a defense that already struggled a lot last year. There may be some gains to be had for UNC if the defense grows into the new 4-2-5 scheme that Fedora's staff implemented last season. On the other hand, those gains might be offset by the fact that USC is one of the few other teams in the country that run a similar defensive scheme, which should help us prepare for the Heels.

My feeling is that this one might be interesting early on if Fedora and Renner figure out a way to piece a couple of scoring drives together, but eventually, USC's superior talent will take over this game. There's little reason to believe that a green UNC defensive front will be able to slow our running game or that UNC's offensive front will be able to hold off Clowney and company for any appreciable period of time. That should add up to USC eventually wearing UNC down on both sides of the ball, a process that may be accelerated by UNC's hurryup offensive style. The real Carolina should have this one under control by early in the final quarter.

The recent commitment of Shamiek Blackshear brought up a conversation regarding the players we've missed out on from the Lowcountry. This got me thinking about some of those players.

The two who come to mind most quickly are Carlos Dunlap and A.J. Green, who went to Florida and Georgia, respectively. Both were high five-star players who ended up having excellent careers at their respective schools and going high in the NFL Draft. We pursued both highly and seemed to be in good position to land them at different points in the recruiting processes, but both ultimately elected to sign with more highly regarded programs--at the time, much more highly regarded programs. It goes without saying that they could have made a major difference for us. Just imagine the receiving corps on the 2010 team with Green in tow.

I'm not really sure why we've struggled in the region. I've heard friends say that they're not surprised about it because so many of the residents in the area now are from up north and the Gamecocks just don't have great visibility. That of course probably doesn't account for much of the issue; it may seem like everyone is an Ohio St. fan in Charleston, but USC alums still hold a sizable predominance in numbers. It's more likely that the problem is that our coaches haven't made great inroads with the high-school coaches in the area.

I also wonder if the perception of our recruiting in the Lowcountry suffers from recency bias. Yes, Blackshear is the first can't-miss prospect from the area in recent years who hasn't spurned USC for supposedly greener pastures, but this was true of other regions, too, until recent years. Just because we've gotten some big-time prospects from Spartanburg and Rock Hill recently certainly doesn't mean we've historically owned those areas. We should also remember that we have brought in some good players from the area over the past few years, such as Bruce Ellington and Devin Taylor.

In any event, Blackshear is merely the latest in a long-line of elite talent to come out of the Lowcountry. Here's hoping that he's starting a trend by coming to Carolina.

This post begins my annual series recounting some of the most memorable plays of the past football season. Today, we're looking at D.J. Swearinger's pick-six against Arkansas QB Tyler Wilson. Here's the play, including the interesting sequence that led up to it.

As for the play itself, in some ways it's more on Wilson than to the credit of Swearinger, which is one of the reasons it's not higher on the list. Wilson is trying to get the ball to a player lined up like a tight end. I'm not sure if it's an end or a big receiver lined up close; the player looks fast in pursuit of Swearinger after the INT, and since he's going up against Shaq Wilson, I wonder if Wilson was trying to isolate a receiver against the somewhat lumbering LB Wilson. In any event, while the receiver does look like he could have made an outside shoulder reception (and potentially some yards after the catch) if not for Swearinger, Wilson clearly didn't see that Swearinger was watching the pattern right behind the receiver. Swearinger jumps the pass and the rest is history.

I chose this play for a number of reasons. First of all, I felt I had to include something by Swearinger. He was one of the best players on last year's team, as evidenced by the fact that he was the first of our players taken in the NFL Draft, and he had a very productive career as a Gamecock. I actually thought about choosing his hit on Andre Ellington from the Clemson game. While he was penalized for taunting after that hit, I felt that was a turning point in the game where Carolina began to assert itself physically against the Tigers, which has been a predominant theme in that series in recent years. In the end, I didn't pick that play because in the moment, it cost Carolina, whereas this one helped us, despite the fact that Swearinger was penalized on this one, too. The penalty here wasn't really "stupid" in the way the one against Clemson could have been if the Tigers had scored on that drive. Given the new rules regarding taunting while going into the end zone, you have to give Swearinger just a bit of credit for holding it in until after he crossed the goal line. As he did score in what was already becoming a lopsided game, the penalty on the kickoff was a moot point.

Lastly, while this wasn't a big win for us in the sense that Arkansas wasn't a very good team this year, this was a revenge game that I think we all took a little pleasure in seeing Carolina win with ease. This play was the one that put us over the top and into blowout mode, and it gets a few points from me for that. It gets a few extra considering that Swearinger served up the revenge against the same Arkansas QB who shredded us in 2011. It was particularly fun seeing Wilson lumbering to try to make the tackle as Swearinger blew by him.