Trailing with remaining in the fourth quarter, South Carolina made one final drive down the field. Shaw would have to leave the game after the fourth completion to Sanders as he was nicked up on the play, resulting in Thompson entering the contest. Thompson moved the Gamecocks down to the Michigan yardline with 20 seconds remaining.
After spiking the ball to stop the clock, Thompson took the next snap and unleashed a perfect strike to Ellington near the goalline.
The Gamecock wide receiver caught the pass on the Michigan 2 and made his way into the end zone to give the Gamecocks a 5-point lead. After a failed 2-point conversion, the Gamecocks defense held off Michigan's final play from scrimmage to lift South Carolina to the victory. The back and forth affair saw the duo of Shaw and Thompson deliver for Carolina as both quarterbacks had success in the air against the Wolverine defense.
Shaw finished for for yards in the air and a pair of touchdowns. Thompson was 7-for for yards as well as two touchdowns. In addition, Shaw was successful running the ball in a majority of the game as he carried 10 times for 96 yards rushing. Junior wide receiver Ace Sanders caught 9 passes for 92 yards with two touchdown receptions as well as a yard punt return for a touchdown.
Senior tailback Kenny Miles had 4 catches for 22 yards, sophomore receiver Nick Jones 2 receptions for 70 yards and sophomore receiver Damiere Byrd 2 receptions for 63 yards. The Gamecocks came out strong offensively as they took the opening kickoff and needed just three plays to find the end zone. On first and 10 from the Carolina 44, Damiere Byrd got behind the Wolverine secondary and Shaw connected with him for a yard scoring strike to give the Gamecocks a lead less than two minutes into the game.
Michigan trimmed South Carolina's lead to with a yard field goal by Brendan Gibbons with left in the first quarter. Sanders fielded the punt at the Gamecock 37 and weaved his way 63 yards to the end zone, giving the Gamecocks a advantage at the mark of the first stanza. It was Sanders' second return for a touchdown of the season and third of his career and was also the longest return in school history in a bowl game. The Wolverines answered with an play, yard scoring drive capped by a 5-yard touchdown pass from Devin Gardner to Drew Dileo, cutting South Carolina's lead to However, the Gamecocks regained their point lead quickly with a four-play, yard touchdown drive.
Dylan Thompson found Nick Jones across the middle for a yard pass to set Carolina up at the Michigan 4. From there Thompson rolled right and found Sanders open in the end zone for a 4-yard touchdown pass to give the Gamecocks a lead with left in the half.
South Carolina turned the ball over at its own 31 on its next possession, but the defense held the Wolverines to a yard field goal by Gibbons, as the Gamecocks took a lead into the locker room. Michigan battled back to take the lead in the second half. Matt Wile made a yard field goal for the Wolverines on their second possession of the third quarter to pull to within If he ran over the top with the running back, they pulled it and hit the quarterback inside. They committed to hitting the quarterback in the second half.
That was obviously a major factor in the game. Well, to be honest with you, we had a couple big plays in the first half. We weren't consistent enough, but we were able to create some big plays.
We didn't make those plays in the second half. We had some opportunities, dropped some balls. They did a good job with their cover zero being extremely aggressive. But we could not get in and out of our checks fast enough to be efficient enough.
We needed to run the ball more consistently. There's no doubt about that. We can't go away from it. We did some good things in the first half. We've got to keep those things mixed in and we didn't do that. I agree with you. Yeah, what we'll do in all these situations, I think you guys know, we'll sit down with the coaching staff and we'll sit down with the players. Sometimes we'll include the parents in that conversation.
Both of those guys would have had to play if we had some injuries, but they wanted to preserve their redshirts. I knew he had a couple sacks. I didn't know he had three. It [ties] an Outback Bowl record. Obviously that is promising for our future. It's going to be really, really important that he continues to grow and develop.
Obviously coming to Penn State he was a new-to-football guy, being mainly a basketball player. The medical staff brought Sean out of the game. I thought he played gutsy. I thought he battled. Obviously he made some plays, but there's also some plays I know he would like to have back. Yeah, Pinegar was the field goal kicker for the last game of the year. I thought we talked about that. But he was the field goal kicker for the last game of the year.
We made that change to take some off of Stout's plate. Stout had punted and kicked off really well all year long. We were a little inconsistent with the field goal game. So we made that change at the end of the season, so that was consistent.
There at the end of the half, it was a yard field goal. We didn't feel good about kicking it. We had a fake in the game plan. Felt like in that situation we would either get a pass interference call or I was hoping they would catch the interception, which would have been as good as a punt.
I'm a huge Jesse Luketa fan. The guy is a football player. He loves football. He's a great teammate. He's played a lot of different positions. As we all know, whether it's the NFL or any other industry, the more things that you can do to bring value, the better. I'm proud of him. He's smart. He's physical. Does a lot of different things. Obviously with our linebacker situation, that was something that was going to have to happen.
He embraced it. I thought he played his tail off. Obviously nobody wants to hear me say that, but was that a factor in the game? Obviously we had a depth situation and we had a bunch of guys that played a bunch of football today that really hadn't played a bunch of football all year long.
I think you guys see, there's a lot to be excited about in his future. He's got tremendous ball skills. He can make people miss. He's built more like a tailback than he is a running back which I think helps him in a lot of different situations. Even some of the punts he fielded, got some positive yards, even the over-the-shoulder punt. Those are 20 yards that are hidden yardage that people don't think about in the game that saved us. Coming into next year, and to see Parker and KeAndre [Lambert-Smith] do some good things today, that's going to be important because we're losing a lot of production in Jahan Dotson.
I don't know if you know this or not, Tig didn't practice all week long. I'm not, as a coach, real happy about that because I would imagine he's going to tell me he doesn't have to practice all next year. He is a football player. Loves, loves to play the game. I think you look this year at [Jaquan] Brisker coming back, how that played out for him, the advantage for him and for us. I think it makes sense for Tig. The other thing obviously is graduation is really important to him and his family, too.
That factored into it, too.
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