Tennessee had a golden opportunity to defeat South Carolina inside Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday night. The Volunteers led by a touchdown on the road and had the ball at the Gamecocks’ 38-yard line with just 3:38 left in the game. They were facing a fourth down, but only needed to gain one yard to sustain their drive that began at their own two-yard line in front of the South Carolina student section. Josh Heupel relied on his offense to win the first down even though his defense had not allowed a point in the second half. “I thought we had something that we could take a first down, hold it and run out the clock there,” Heupel said during his postgame press conference. Tennessee couldn’t take advantage of the opportunity. He turned the ball over when George MacIntyre was tackled for a loss. The second-year quarterback appeared to go in the wrong direction on the game-changing play, or not get the ball to the right person. “George’s mistakes on that one,” Heupel explained when asked what went wrong on the play that led to South Carolina scoring 10 points in the final 3:35 to beat No. 11 Tennessee, 27-24. “Yeah, just a miscommunication, a formation that we’ve been running the whole game,” MacIntyre added. “We just have to be more focused on the details of the different plays and that big giant formation.” The failed fourth-down play was supposed to be similar to the play DaSaahn Brame ran for a touchdown from one yard out midway through the second quarter. This time, however, MacIntyre proceeded to roll to his right instead of passing the ball to Brame, who was lined up as a full-back. “Yes, there are a lot of moving parts to the game with assassinations and controls and what fronts they are going to execute,” MacIntyre said. “But yeah, it would have been similar to DaSaahn’s touchdown in the first half.”
