Sooners' showing vs. South Carolina will provide directional momentum for rest of season

Every college football coach worth his salt will tell you, with conviction, that every game is important. But as fans, we all know that some games are more important than others.

Oklahoma's SEC conference game with South Carolina this weekend is one of those.

South Carolina is only the seventh Oklahoma football opponent of the season, but how the Sooners show up and perform in this game is a solid test of what we can expect from this OU team the remainder of the season.

At the beginning of the season, South Carolina looked like a game you project in the Sooner win column, with the game being played at Oklahoma and on homecoming weekend. Here at the midpoint of the 2024 season, though, that doesn't look nearly as certain as it once did.

For one thing, the once high-powered Oklahoma has been operating at only a fraction of its full power due to untimely injuries and an assortment of other issues. The Sooner defense is now playing at an SEC championship level -- something that was of prime concern a couple of seasons ago -- but it can't be expected to carry the water all alone.

Turning to Saturday's game with South Carolina, the Gamecocks, led by former Oklahoma assistant coach and special teams coordinator Shane Beamer, were picked to finish 13th out of the 16 SEC teams in the SEC 2024 Preseason Football Media Poll. USC is 1-3 in conference games this season, with the one win coming on the road at Kentucky on the second weekend of the season. More telling, however, is that two of South Carolina's three losses were to top-10 teams LSU and Alabama by three and two points, respectively.

Most impressive of all was the way the Gamecocks battled last weekend on the road at Alabama. The Crimson Tide hung on to win the game, 27-25, but South Carolina had a chance to win the game before Alabama intercepted a pass in the their own end zone as time expired

South Carolina's Beamer knows something about how good an Oklahoma offense firing on all cylinders can be. He was at OU under Lincoln Riley when the Sooners led the nation in total offense in 2018 and were top-three the year after. Beamer was asked about OU's offensive struggles during an SEC coaches' conference call earlier this week:

"They've had some injuries, obviously, at the receiver position specifically, but I think when you watch their entire team, the thing that jumps off tape is how hard they play, the effort they are playing with," Beamer said. "That's a testament to Coach Venables and his culture and what that program's about."

The Sooners have some extremely tough games left on the schedule after South Carolina, starting with a showdown with former top-10 and now 18th-ranked Ole Miss on the road next weekend. Following that, OU has No. 19 Missouri, No. 7 Alabama and N0. 8 LSU to close out the regular schedule.

With all the issues surrounding Oklahoma Team 130, which is how Venables refers to the 2024 edition of Sooner football, there isn't a very comfortable feeling or much confidence among Sooner fans that this season can get salvaged. Success breeds success, after all, and Oklahoma fans are fickle and have been spoiled with the success of this program over the years.

That's why this game with South Carolina is so important. A win over the Gamecocks isn't going to instantly flip the switch and make everything 100 percent whole again. What it will do, though, restore some of the confidence and belief in each other that got stomped on in the embarrassing loss to top-ranked Texas last weekend. Oklahoma can't do anything about that game, but it can do something about the games and teams that are on the schedule in the weeks ahead.

The performance and outcome of the game on Saturday not only can provide motivation and momentum for the rest of this season but also set the tone and direction for what happens beyond the 2024 season for the proud Oklahoma football program.

"As I've said, when you look at our schedule, there's nothing easy about it," Venables told reporters this week. "But there's nothing on the schedule that says we can't win every game. "We have to get better. We need to play to our potential, particularly in the areas where it's most important."