The two biggest stories in the Southeastern Conference on the final Saturday of October were the season-ending injury to South Carolina running back Marcus Lattimore and the dream-ending bursting of Florida’s championship bubble by the Georgia Bulldogs.
The injury to Lattimore was the cruelest of stories. Just as in 2011, Lattimore’s season ended with him lying on the turf in agony. This time another crushing blow came on a hit by Tennessee’s Eric Gordon on Lattimore’s right knee as Herman Lathers was tackling the Gamecock star in the second quarter. At that point, Lattimore had already run for 65 yards and a touchdown, the 41st of his career.
Lattimore’s injury was sickening to watch with his right leg flopping around at odd angles below his knee. The injury brought an outpouring of sympathy and encouragement on Twitter for the South Carolina junior, who was thought to be a Heisman Trophy candidate before his first injury.
“He’s such a good young man,” said South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier. “Good things are going to happen for Marcus. I don’t know exactly where or how, but good things are going to happen for Marcus Lattimore.”
On Sunday the doctors revealed that there was significant ligament damage with the knee hyperextension but there were no fractures of any type according to South Carolina team doctor, Dr. Jeff Guy.
Notes of sympathy for Lattimore came from around the conference and the football nation, including the National Football League.
Lattimore was having a fine season with 662 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns on 143 carries and a team-leading 26 receptions for 173 yards. He had worked so hard rehabbing the 2011 injury to make it back on the field this season. Now he will have to do it again if we are going to be treated to a senior season from one of the most exciting players in the SEC. …
The other big story was Georgia’s 17-9 win that handed Florida its first loss of the season. The Bulldogs did not play a great game but, thanks to an amazing six turnovers by the Gators, Georgia is now in control of the SEC East. To win the division title and play for the SEC championship, Georgia just has to beat Ole Miss (5-3) and Auburn (1-7).
“That might have been one of the most intense games I’ve ever coached from start to finish,” Georgia head coach Mark Richt after the Florida game. “Emotions were so high and the officials were in the heart of it. They were trying to do whatever they could to slow it down. They knew our guys wanted to get after each other, and they just didn’t want it to escalate.”
Now the Bulldogs are on the fast track to the SEC Championship Game, but they can’t afford to overlook Ole Miss. The Rebels need one more victory to become bowl eligible and they would love to get it against Georgia.
“They’ve got every reason to believe they can win out,” Richt said about the Rebels. “They have a really good team to (be able to) win the last two games that they’ve played. They very easily could have won the Texas A&M game, and that would have been three league wins in a row. When you start chasing success, you start getting excited and believing in yourself. They’re on the rise right now, and when you play a team that has a lot of momentum, they’re hard to beat.
“Like Jarvis [Jones] said after the game against Florida, this victory really doesn’t mean anything unless we keep winning. Of course, he’s talking about the race for the Eastern Division. We know that we have to win and continue to play like we did this last game. I’ve been watching film already on Ole Miss, and the first thing I watched on their defense was their first half against Alabama. They played tremendously well. They really did a great job in that ball game in the first half.
“Offensively, they can move the ball in a lot of different ways. They’re a very high-tempo team, and they do a lot of things that create problems for defenses. We definitely have our work cut out for us,” Richt said.
The Bulldogs were beneficiaries of seven turnovers in the game, but perhaps none was bigger than the fumble by Jordan Reed on the Georgia 5-yard line with just over two minutes to play. Reed was sprinting for a touchdown and perhaps game-tying two-point conversion in the closing seconds. The path to the end zone was apparently open, but Jones punched the ball out from behind and it was recovered in the end zone by Sanders Commings.
“That’s the end of the game in my opinion – six turnovers,” said Florida coach Will Muschamp. “We can’t go out and lay it on the ground six times. That’s not what we can do. We have to take advantage of field position, which we didn’t. We have to take advantage of turnovers, which we didn’t. We’ve just got to go back and regroup.
“That’s what I told the team in the locker room. You’ve won well together, now we’ll figure out how we handle adversity as a football team,” he said. “I think we’ll be fine in the long run. We just need to push through this. There’s no question – there’s a lot of football to play. I’m very disappointed with the outcome of the game, not disappointed with the effort.” …
On the other side of the conference, Alabama set up its classic battle next week with LSU by dominating previously undefeated Mississippi State. The Tigers had a bye week.
“I think at this point in the season it’s kind of like the playoffs in a way. You’ve got a tough game the next week. You’ve got a good opponent the next week. You’ve got somebody in your division that’s a really good team,” said Tide coach Nick Saban. “We are going to have to continue to improve and learn from our experiences today in terms of the good things that we did and also correct some of the things we didn’t do very well. Every game has a history, a life of its own. It’s up to us to try and do the best we can to put our players in the best possible position to be successful.”
Linebacker C.J. Mosley said the Crimson Tide players know what will be at stake against LSU.
“We don’t even have to talk about it,” he said. “You already know what is set for next week’s game, based off last year and based off the national championship. We just have to treat every game like it’s another game. We just got to be ready for what they bring.” …
Around the rest of the conference, SEC newcomers Missouri and Texas A&M got conference wins on the same day. Missouri got its first SEC win by beating Kentucky, while Texas A&M continued Auburn’s misery by annihilating Auburn.