First Look: 5 things to know about South Carolina

Monday Recruiting Rundown

Who has played, redshirted?

Reaction: Arkansas 42, NMSU 24

The Gamecocks started the season with a 35-28 win over a NC State team that is currently 4-1 and ranked in the top 25. A closer look at the Wolfpack, however, reveals that three of their wins were against Marshall (37-20), Furman (49-16) and Syracuse (33-25). The Pack did go into Tallahassee and upset a pretty average Florida State team, but they haven't been overly impressive since dropping the opener.

South Carolina then went to Missouri and blasted the Tigers, 31-13. Again, it seemed like a pretty impressive victory at the time, but since that game Mizzou has lost back-to-back home contests to Purdue (35-3) and Auburn (51-14). In other words, USC's lopsided win in Columbia probably doesn't hold the same value at this point.

The Gamecocks dropped their first game at Kentucky, 23-13, three weekends ago, but what do we really know about the Wildcats right now? We know they struggled with a Southern Miss team in the opener (24-17), Eastern Kentucky in the second weekend (27-16), and Eastern Michigan (24-20) this past weekend. The Cats had a wider margin of victory over South Carolina than it did against those three teams.

Will Muschamp's USC team barely got by Louisiana Tech at home, 17-16. Now, the Razorbacks did the same thing a year ago, and the Bulldogs are certainly capable of sneaking up on SEC teams, but needing a game-winning field goal with 4 seconds left does stick out like a sore thumb on Carolina's resume thus far.

This past weekend, the Gamecocks had a fourth-quarter lead at Texas A&M, 17-10, but, in Arkansas-like fashion, got outscored 14-0 in the final quarter.

South Carolina has one of the conference's best quarterbacks in sophomore Jake Bentley, who enters Saturday's game with 1,257 passing yards and nine touchdowns against four picks.

Bentley, now 7-5 as a starter at USC, is fifth among SEC quarterbacks on third down completion percentage, an area in which the Razorbacks have struggled so far this season.

The 6-3, 220-pound Bentley isn't a big running threat but can move when he has to. He has been sacked 15 times this season, seven of which came Saturday night at Texas A&M, and the Gamecocks now rank 13th in the conference in sacks allowed per-game.