South Carolina Reax: Garcia Being Garcia

"You mad, Brah?"

Auburn had the perfect game plan Saturday on defense vs. SC: Let Garcia be himself. The Tigers bottled up Marcus Lattimore (again) and made ol Greazy try to beat them (again).

I obviously had some pretty big doubts going in because of the defense. But Ted Roof has a way of bottling up pro-style offenses that are run first. Saturday afternoon was no exception. Of course, if you believe the scuttlebut out there Coach Chiz has been pretty involoved the last two weeks on the defensive side. Let's hope he stays there, because the d-line play was remarkably better, as well as the secondary.

The offense took a step back in this game, as Trooter looked more like the QB that downs high gravity beers with co-eds in his room at times. Granted, we couldn't block the defensive ends for the Gamecocks at all, but the two INT's were horrendous, especially the second one, which cost us a scoring opportunity.

Steven Clark is making a pretty strong push for all-conference if this keeps up. How many times did SC start on the 11 yard line. I said earlier this year that special teams would win us a game or two, there's game #1.

Lutzy is a winner, not just for the game winning TD, but for the punch-out and fumble recovery after Trotter's first INT. That was huge. He is our leader on offense, and he refuses to lose.

Dyer showed up with an Iron man type performance, carrying 41 times. About 21 of those were the same play. He lowers his body and gets three yards every time. You can win games that way.

This was a win we really needed. We dominated this game even if the scoreboard said otherwise. We need to keep pushing when we cross the 50. For whatever reason, we booged down Saturday between the 50 and the opponent's 25. We cannot let that happen in the weeks to come. But we are getting better. A win Saturday against the Hogs and we are in really good shape for the rest of October.

War Eagle.