Tennessee Vols At South Carolina Gamecocks Game Preview And Stat Comparison

A weekly look at our upcoming opponent's recent history, with animated drive charts, links to SB Nation game pages, and statistical comparisons.

CAVEATS: You know the drill. Also, this: all of the following information is gleaned exclusively from the NCAA statistics and does not account for things like injuries, shared playing time, and other stuff difficult to see in the stats from a bird's eye view. As always, this is a long post, so I've put the conclusions and predictions before and after the meat. You're not seeing double.

Sketchy Conclusions

• Much like Alabama, South Carolina has a pick-your-poison offense. They have a world-class receiver in Alshon Jeffery and a running back in Marcus Lattimore who looks to be world-class at times as well. If Tennessee employs the same game plan as it did against Alabama (focus more on stopping the RBs), expect the Gamecocks to have something like the same success with Jeffery that 'Bama did with Julio Jones. I'd expect Tennessee, however, to focus more on stopping Garcia and Jeffery this week, though, for a couple of reasons. First, they've been a bit more consistent than has Lattimore. Second, Tennessee shouldn't want to die the same way twice in consecutive weeks. Still, if that happens, expect Lattimore to have a big week. One or the other should be acceptable, but allowing both to have great success would not be good.
• Brace yourself for sacks and general havoc in Tennessee's backfield. South Carolina ranks 5th in the nation in sacks, and the Vols rank 113th in sacks allowed. Three of the Gamecocks' defensive linemen rank nationally in sacks, tackles for loss, or both.
• If Tennessee has an advantage, it's in special teams. Imagine that.

Predictions

• South Carolina 31, Tennessee 20. Sorry. Again.

Schedule and Animated Drive Charts

Southern Miss. Golden Eagles	9/2/10	win 41 - 13	coverage
Georgia Bulldogs	9/11/10	win 17 - 6	coverage
Furman Paladins	9/18/10	win 38 - 19	coverage
@ Auburn Tigers	9/25/10	loss 27 - 35	coverage
Alabama Crimson Tide	10/9/10	win 35 - 21	coverage
@ Kentucky Wildcats	10/16/10	loss 28 - 31	coverage
@ Vanderbilt Commodores	10/23/10	win 21 - 7	coverage

Let's take a quick look at the drive charts for our games against Georgia and Alabama.

Georgia scored 41 points against Tennessee and only 6 against South Carolina. I do think that those were two entirely different Georgia teams, but still.

The Gamecocks did pretty much what they wanted on offense against Alabama's D. Tennessee, not exactly. They also limited the Tide to two TDs and a couple of field goals where Tennessee hung with them for a half before getting rolled after the break.

National Unit Rankings

Now on to the national rankings.

Offensive observations. If you've seen Marcus Lattimore run this season, you're probably going "huh?" right along with me at that 70th-ranked rushing offense. He's played in every game but the last one, and, with the exception of going for 187 against Georgia, he's been held under 100 yards per game. Several games just under, but still. The team's passing efficiency is top ten, but the other offensive stats are just pretty good. They do allow a lot of sacks.

Defensive observations. Here's an uh-oh stat: The Gamecocks are 5th in the nation in sacks and the Vols are 113th in sacks allowed. That might actually tell the entire story when Tennessee has the ball, but they're solid against the run, too. Not so good against the pass, which balances things out a bit for that all important total defense category. But they're stingy with the end and red zones, ranking 27th in scoring defense despite a middle-of-the-road total defense.

Special teams and turnovers observations. Oh, look. Punt returns and kickoff returns of 112th and 83rd, respectively. Woo for that. They're also not doing well in net punting or turnovers, so there are some intangibles to hang hopes on.

Stastical Comparison

Here's how the teams looked when the RTT BlogPoll Computery Thing chewed them up and spit them out.

R	Team	WL	SOS	PED	RD	3DO	TD	PEO	OPPG	TO	3DD
23		25	22	92	13	5	52	7	27	46	68
90		90	13	57	75	115	88	92	83	95	69

Sort of what you'd expect, except that Tennessee actually ranks better in pass efficiency defense and has compiled its numbers against a marginally stronger schedule. In all of the other categories, though, South Carolina ranks well ahead of the Vols.

Players to watch for

Observations

Offense.

Quarterback. Stephen Garcia is 5th in the nation with a 170.23 pass efficiency rating, and he's 40th in total offense. Much of that is no doubt due to Alshon Jeffery . . .

Receivers. Jeffery is an absolute beast, and his numbers prove it: 13th in the nation in receptions per game and 3rd in receiving yards per game. He and Spurrier and Garcia will no doubt seek to do to Tennessee what Julio Jones and Saban and McElroy did, if the Vols employ the same game plan. Who knows, because the challenge is essentially the same: stop both a fantastic passing game and a fantastic running game. Tori Gurley, by the way, also ranks nationally (83rd) in receptions per game.

Running backs. Marcus Lattimore ranks 37th nationally in rushing, averaging nearly 90 yards per game, and he's tied for 3rd in the nation in scoring. When he was out last week against Vanderbilt, Brian Maddox got 146. All of that makes that team rushing offense that ranks merely 70th perplexing. Maybe they're just not getting him the ball enough. This is Steve Spurrier we're talking about here. Lattimore's supposed to play Saturday, by the way.

Defense. The guys to watch out for here are DLs Devin Taylor, Melvin Ingram, and Travian Robertson. Taylor ranks 15th in sacks and 23rd in tackles for loss, Ingram ranks 46th in sacks, and Robertson ranks 88th in tackles for loss. Note, too, that these guys are all defensive linemen and will be lining up against Tennessee's offensive line.

Special teams. Spencer Lanning is having a solid year as punter for the Gamecocks. Other than that, though, special teams isn't South Carolina's strength.

Head to Head Comparisons

How'd we do with the head-to-head comparisons during Alabama week? Not great, although we weren't off too much on Alabama's passing and Tennessee's score.

So let's see if we can be any more accurate this week:

			Best Comparable(s)	Result Against Best Comp	Prediction
UT rush v. South Carolina rush defense	121.29 (#91)	101.29 (#13)	Georgia/Alabama (99.25/113.38) (#12/#21)	9/159	90
UT pass v. South Carolina pass defense	199.57 (#74)	252.43 (#104)	UAB/Georgia (219.86/207.50) (#71/#57)	245/260	280
South Carolina rush v. UT rush defense	161.57 (#75)	143.29 (#70)	Florida/Georgia (142.14/153.75) (#74/#58)	150/136	150
South Carolina pass v. UT pass defense	241.57 (#95)	260.71 (T-#31)	Oregon/Alabama (260.71/253.88) (T-#31/37)	202/326	240
UT scoring offense v. South Carolina scoring defense	21.43 (#94)	18.86 (#27)	Florida/Georgia (18.71/19.13) (#26/#30)	17/14	20
South Carolina scoring offense v. UT scoring defense	29.43 (#83)	29.57 (#53)	Florida/Georgia (27.57/31.50) (#62/#39)	31/41	31

As always, these are informed guesses rather than mathematical calculations. The general analytical framework is this: We are averaging X in a certain category. The opponent averages Y against that, which is most closely comparable to some identified previous opponent, against whom we did Z. All of that leads to an informed guess labeled as Prediction. The less data you have, the more sketchy the guess, and the guesses range from ALL CAPS SKETCHY WITH EXCLAMATION POINTS at the beginning of the season to merely lower case sketchy for the last game.

This week's example: Tennessee is averaging 21.43 points per game. South Carolina is holding opponents to an average of 18.86, which is one spot behind Florida and three spots ahead of Georgia. Against Florida and Georgia, Tennessee scored 17 and 14 points. The turnovers and getting way behind early killed the Vols' game plan against Georgia, and the yardage stats are closer than I expected them to be, so I bumped the prediction for UT's score up to 20. It may be optimistic, as we haven't scored more than 14 points in the last three games, but it's my best guess.

Overall, I think the line's a little high on this one. If you just look at the scores, you'd want to say that the Gamecocks should win 34 or more to 17 or so. But the yardage stats are much closer, so I bumped UT up a bit and SC down a bit.

Sketchy Conclusions

• Much like Alabama, South Carolina has a pick-your-poison offense. They have a world-class receiver in Alshon Jeffery and a running back in Marcus Lattimore who looks to be world-class at times as well. If Tennessee employs the same game plan as it did against Alabama (focus more on stopping the RBs), expect the Gamecocks to have something like the same success with Jeffery that 'Bama did with Julio Jones. I'd expect Tennessee, however, to focus more on stopping Garcia and Jeffery this week, though, for a couple of reasons. First, they've been a bit more consistent than has Lattimore. Second, Tennessee shouldn't want to die the same way twice in consecutive weeks. Still, if that happens, expect Lattimore to have a big week. One or the other should be acceptable, but allowing both to have great success would not be good.
• Brace yourself for sacks and general havoc in Tennessee's backfield. South Carolina ranks 5th in the nation in sacks, and the Vols rank 113th in sacks allowed. Three of the Gamecocks' defensive linemen rank nationally in sacks, tackles for loss, or both.
• If Tennessee has an advantage, it's in special teams. Imagine that.

Predictions

• South Carolina 31, Tennessee 20. Sorry. Again.