Luke Doty’s health, improved run game key to South Carolina success
COLUMBIA — When South Carolina starting quarterback Luke Doty broke his foot six weeks ago, coach Shane Beamer quickly dismissed any sense of “doom and gloom” surrounding the injury to his offense’s most important player.
During his weekly Tuesday news conference ahead of Saturday’s home game against Troy, Beamer again went to another often-used phrase to declare “the sky is not falling” after imploring those outside the program to realize his team is 2-2 after a 16-10 loss to Kentucky and it’s still only September.
“You’ve got to stick to the plan and stay focused on the process,” Beamer said. “My dad (former longtime Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer) used to say all the time, be it to his son or his football team, ‘Things are never as good or bad as they seem. There’s somewhere in between.’ There was certainly a lot of bad (Saturday) night, but there was a lot of good as well. I think our players realize how close we are and it was frustrating not to be able to get over the hump the other night.
“I’m not all of a sudden going to make rash decisions off of four games into year one (of his tenure). We have a good plan for how we’re going to be able to get this thing going. We’re still in September and we’re not going in and blowing up everything. We’ve got good players and coaches and we’ve got to perform better.”
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The Troy matchup begins a three-game stretch likely crucial to USC reaching any sort of success when it comes to win-total with games at Tennessee and hosting Vanderbilt to follow. After that comes strongest of the schedule with the final five opponents being Texas A&M, Florida, Missouri, Auburn and Clemson.
One of the current main mysterious issues is USC’s lack of ability to run the ball with much success, especially the past two weeks. The ground game was the one of the rare areas that excelled during last year’s 2-8 debacle, showcasing a breakout season by Associated Press All-SEC running back Kevin Harris and despite the absence of blue- chip freshman MarShawn Lloyd to a torn ACL.
Although USC’s defense forced three turnovers against Kentucky, its offense couldn’t capitalize. The Gamecocks rushed for 58 yards while averaging just 2.2 yards per carry a week after 96 rushing yards on 2.8 per carry at Georgia. So far, Harris (35 carries for 92 yards) and Lloyd in his healthy return (27 for 98) have been woefully unproductive and neither has scored a touchdown.
The Gamecocks rank 11th in the SEC at 123.3 yards per game, 12th at 3.4 per carry and last with only one rushing touchdown.
“It wasn’t like we had a bunch of runs that were just bad schematically (against Kentucky) and didn’t have a chance,” Beamer said. “It’s just the details of the play — if your footwork is a little off at the running back position and we’re a little quick on a play, or footwork of the quarterback is off. I don’t want to say (we need to) simplify, but hone in on the details and maybe simplify a little bit, execute a smaller number of plays and be effective at that. No matter what we call, we’ve got good offensive linemen, running backs and should be able to execute no matter what the defense is and what play is called.”
A spark to the rushing game will be Doty’s return to full health when he displays the bounce in his step that has proven him to be among the best athletes on the roster. Doty missed the first two weeks of the season before coming off the bench against Georgia. His lone start was last week against Kentucky. Once he’s healed and fully comfortable to utilize his dual-threat ability, USC can confidently expand its game planning.
“Is he running as well as he did before he got hurt? Probably not,” Beamer said. “Is he that far off? No. And as he continues to feel better we’ll continue to open up stuff. We don’t feel necessarily limited (in play-calling), but I don’t think it’s realistic to say he’s 100 percent. He’s dang close to it and he’s well enough to play and I’m glad he’s out there battling as tough as he is.”
