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With South Carolina heading to Arkansas for the final game of its first half of the season, Gamecocks fans were simply looking for a complete game, one where Steve Spurrier's team didn't let the opponent get up off the mat and turn a game that should have been a laugher into a close contest at the end. On Saturday, they seemed to get one. (For Arkansas, this was little more than a game to flush down the memory hole before trying to move forward.)
The Gamecocks churned out 537 yards of total offense -- almost perfectly balanced between run and pass -- and 32 first-downs. After the Razorbacks scored the first touchdown to take a brief 7-0 lead, South Carolina reeled off 52 unanswered. The Gamecocks held the ball for more than 43 minutes. They held Arkansas to 30 yards passing. You won't find Jadeveon Clowney's name on the stat sheet for this game, but you're also not likely to hear many other radio hosts call the Gamecocks defense end a joke or anyone else question Clowney's effort after this game.
Still: Arkansas ran for an average of 9.1 yards per carry. Even if you take out the Razorbacks' three longest runs of the game, two of which came when the game was pretty much over, they still rank for about 4.5 yards a pop. That's not catastrophic, but it's also a troubling sign for a team trying to contend for a division title. Overall, though, South Carolina finally put together its first impressive performance of the season and saw Georgia lose to Missouri. That counts as a good weekend no matter what the caveats.