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Our friend Scott Hall gives his weekly look deeper into the stats of the previous week's game. Enjoy.
Florida finishes its SEC schedule 8-0 for the first time since 1996 with a 24-14 win over South Carolina on Saturday, in front of a crowd of 79,297 at Williams-Brice Stadium. Florida ties Auburn for the longest winning streak in SEC history with 20 games, and improves to 23-4-3 all-time against the Gamecocks.
Florida has won 18 of the last 19 against the Gamecocks. Before the 2005 loss in Columbia, Florida hadn’t lost to South Carolina since 1939. An illegal participation call (12 men on the field) late in the 2005 game during a Gamecocks punt resulted in a first down for USC and sealed the 30-22 win over Florida. The following season, Spurrier almost upended Florida’s championship season in the 2006 game in the Swamp. Florida had never lost to the Gamecocks at home (currently 12-0), and relied on a late TD scoring drive by Chris Leak and company, as well as a blocked field goal to secure the 17-16 win.
Florida and South Carolina only met 12 times on the gridiron from before the SEC expanded in 1992 with South Carolina joining the East and Arkansas joining the West. Since then, the teams have played every year.
South Carolina has lost four of their last five games after starting the season 5-1, and the third time in Spurrier’s five seasons that he’s finished with a sub-.500 SEC mark – something that never happened during his 1990-2001 tenure with Florida.
Tebow tied Kevin Faulk’s (LSU) career rushing & receiving SEC TD mark with 53 on Saturday.
Urban Meyer moved into first place on the list of the all-time winningest SEC coaches in conference games, with a win percentage of .800 (32-8), surpassing Tennessee’s Robert Neyland.
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