COLUMBIA, S.C. – The No. 10 Texas A&M football team suffered its first SEC loss of the season on Saturday night when it fell to South Carolina 44-20 at Williams-Brice Stadium.

Marcel Reed earned the start for the Aggies (7-2, 5-1 SEC) and finished the night 18-of-28 passing for 206 yards and one touchdown. The redshirt freshman also added 46 yards on the ground on 16 attempts. Run back Amari Daniels led the Maroon & White with 83 yards on 13 carries to go along with one score. Among the Aggie recipients, Jabre Kapper recorded a team-best 80 yards on seven catches and one touchdown.

Linebacker Taurus York collected a team-high eight tackles, five of which were solos, while Dalton Brooks, Marcus Ratcliffe And Shemar Stewart each followed by five.

A fast start by the Gamecocks (5-3, 3-3 SEC) left the Aggies trailing early 14-0 with 8:24 left in the opening quarter. Texas A&M was able to slow South Carolina’s momentum behind the stage Randy Bondwho connected on a 52-yard field goal with 5:15 left in the period. Maroon & White’s defense provided a spark in the final minute of the first Wil Lee III forced a fumble to do so BJ Mayes managed to recover.

The Aggies capitalized on the turnover in the second quarter when Bond connected on a career-long 55-yard field goal attempt with 13:12 left in the half, cutting the deficit to 14-6. After a 25-yard field goal in South Carolina, Amari Daniels found a hole through the right sideline and broke free for a season-long 56-yard touchdown run to pull the Maroon & White to within four, 17-13, with 7:29 left. The Aggies later took the lead when Reed found Barber for a two-yard touchdown on a fourth-down stop by the Texas A&M defense. Bond’s extra point gave the Maroon & White a 20-17 lead with 1:08 remaining.

The two teams went into halftime tied at 20-20 when the Gamecocks pushed a 44-yard field goal through the uprights in the final seconds of the quarter.

Texas A&M gave up an early touchdown from the break and had no answer for the Gamecocks, who were able to pull away in the third quarter and grab a pair of touchdowns in the fourth.

The Aggies are off next week before hosting New Mexico State on Senior Day on November 16.

 

Team notes

• Texas A&M has forced a turnover after a fumble in seven of its last eight games against South Carolina.
• The Maroon & White scored for the third time this season on a rushing play of more than 50 yards.
• For the first time since the 2015 season, the Aggies connected on multiple field goals of more than 50 yards in a game.

Individual notes

• Junior RB Amari Daniels broke away on a season-long 56-yard touchdown run for his sixth rushing score of the season.
• Senior W.R Jabre Kapper led the receiving corps for the second time in three games, catching a season-best seven passes for 80 yards and his first touchdown as an Aggie.
• Freshman QB Marcel Reed threw for a season-best 206 yards and completed 18 of his 28 passes.
• Sophomore LB Taurus York led the defense with eight tackles for the fifth time this season.
• JuniorDL Shemar Stewart matched his career high with five takedowns and added a career-best two breakups.
• Sophomore DB Marcus Ratcliffe scored a season-best five tackles for the third time this year.
• Graduate K Randy Bond connected on his first field goal from more than 50 yards of the season, first sending a 52-yarder through the uprights in the first quarter and later registering a new career high with a 55-yard field goal in the second quarter.
• Bond has made eight field goals from 50 yards or more in his career, becoming the first A&M kicker to make two field goals of more than 50 yards in a game since Taylor Bertolet (2012-2015) hit 54 and 52 yards. yarders against Alabama in 2015.
• Bond’s eight points in the match increased his career total to 270, putting him tied for seventh all-time with Rodney Thomas (1991-94) and Darren Lewis (1987-90) on A&M’s overall scoring list.

Hats off to South Carolina. They defeated us. Beat us at the line of scrimmage, on both sides of the ball. Had the game under control. Forced conversion. Couldn’t run the ball. Couldn’t tackle, couldn’t check the quarterback. And so, you know, we didn’t do anything that you have to do to win a football game. And that’s why we lost. We have to get better. We have to fix them. And we must never play like that again.

How disappointed were you in the tackles and what do you think you guys didn’t do, or what they did well, that led to so many of those missed tackles?

Obviously, I don’t want to sit here and say it’s all of us, right? Because you have to give them credit. I’m not going to be the coach that sits here and doesn’t give them credit. They have a great quarterback. He weighs 240 pounds. They got a great running back. He weighs 230 pounds. And you know, we didn’t bring our feet. We didn’t approach it the way you should tackle big backs. They are big, powerful kids. And if you want to tackle big, powerful kids, you have to put your body through it. And we didn’t do that tonight.

When you decided to go for them on your side of the field on fourth downs, was that possibly a byproduct of maybe not having enough confidence in your defense to make a stop?

No. I mean, it was both a quarter and a half meters that we were going for. And that’s what we’re going to do. I mean, that’s something we’re going to do. We have never been in that situation before, but we should be able to get half a meter.

Do the penalties make you feel like you guys skated by for parts of the season and came back to bite you today?

Certainly. Yes, I told them, in a few areas. I think the missed tackles have been increasing and you know sometimes the hardest thing to do is learn in victory because it’s covered and masked. So I think some of the things that went on behind the scenes that we played through and won definitely showed up tonight in a really bad way. And so that’s up to me. My job as a coach is to help them understand that at the level they need to understand it, and to solve it. And I didn’t do that. And so that’s up to me.

After the way it started, did you feel like you got a little bit of control and some momentum going into halftime?

I don’t know if I ever thought we had control. I thought we should have gone into the locker room with the lead. The two penalties on the two-minute drive, you know, we just gave them the three points to tie the game. To some extent that gave them the momentum back. We had stormed back. We had taken the lead. I thought we did a really good job with the clock at the end of the first half and gave them very little time to get onto the pitch. And you know, we gave them, what, 25 or 30 yard penalties on that drive? And we just gifted them a field goal. But obviously at 20-20 years old you still felt like you had a chance. And then we miscue a run and on a fourth-and-one they break it for a long touchdown. That’s a killer. And then we don’t get the fourth and a half yards and we can go out and hold them to a field goal, but that’s killing. And then I still think we’re still fighting at that point. Then it just gets to a point where we’re playing more of a total defense to try to stop them from running the ball and they drop a long ball and put the play away.

What do you think of Marcel’s performance off the top of your head?

Definitely a bit up and down. We weren’t built to play those kinds of games. We can’t fall behind like that in the second half. Once it got to that point and we couldn’t play the game we’re better at, I think that really hurt us. But then again, he’s still a young kid. He is learning. He’s getting better. Of course he has to be a little more careful with football. The interception on the first down, that was obviously a huge momentum swing. I think we were ten points behind at that point. He has to learn. But certainly not on him from the game. There are many other things that start with me that caused us to lose this football match.

Will Marcel improve as a starter?

He’s the starter now and we’ll see where we go.

How are you? Le’Veon Moss and how much did it hurt not to have him?

Le’Veon is a great back and it was hard not having him. We’ll see. I don’t think it really looks good right now, but I don’t think it might look as bad as it does on the field. Hopefully it’s not that terrible, but I do think he’ll be out for a while.

Mike, after last week’s win and all the praise and everything they’ve gotten this past week, is there any chance that you guys have lost focus?

No.

Do you feel like everything is still on the table for what you want to do to make this a successful season?

It feels that way because it is that way. We are tied for first. We still control our own destiny to Atlanta. We still control our own destiny for the play-offs. So yeah, it feels very much like that. Because it is.

You almost came close to Sellers a few times. What did he do to escape?

Yes, it felt like we almost got him a few times. And I don’t think we gave him anything. That’s why I chuckle. He’s a big kid. And it’s clear that I’ve done a poor job of getting our kids to understand how to handle a 240-pound kid. We kept trying to go high around him. And he’s too strong for that.