If Winston-Salem State was a trap game, then 15th-ranked South Carolina State is readying itself to enter a proverbial “hornet’s nest” Saturday at the University of South Carolina.

This is how Bulldogs’ head coach Oliver “Buddy” Pough is approaching the second meeting between the two in-state schools.

 While S.C. State (3-0, 1-0) has the national ranking and is seeking its first 4-0 start since 1997, the Gamecocks (3-1, 1-1) are riding high following their 16-10 win over previously fourth-ranked Mississippi. That goes without mentioning the adjustment the Bulldogs face in playing at raucous Williams-Brice Stadium.

Pough also looks at South Carolina’s defense and wonders how a Bulldog offensive line which he has challenged this week will block the likes of South Carolina’s Eric Norwood, who won Southeastern Conference Defensive Player of the Week Monday, and defensive linemen Cliff Matthews and Ladi Ajiboye. He’s also concerned about trying to pressure quarterback Stephen Garcia without sack leader Pat Washington (leg injury) and the many innovations the Steve Spurrier will try to employ.

“They can do it all,” said Pough during Monday’s press conference. “And against us, we’ll see some deep balls. And then, of course, conceptually, he has the whole package as far as the way to stretch a team vertically and horizontally.”

At the same time, Pough hopes the experience from 2007, a 38-3 South Carolina win, and the offensive weapons the Bulldogs will bring into Columbia Saturday will make it a competitive game.

“You go into games with the best of intentions,” Pough said. “We’re going to do this and that kind of stuff, but you find out it just can’t be. At that point, you go to whatever your plans are. We’ve got to have some contingency plans for different situations that possibly may happen because of things that arise during the game that we might not necessarily be able to foresee.

“But at the same time, we’d like to try to get in there and try to run it down their throat and control the ball for 40 minutes. Against Georgia, I think they may have had the football for 80-something snaps. It would be great if we could do something like that. Now I don’t think that’s foreseeable in the situation we have right now. So we’ll see.”

Coming off a 27-10 win over Winston-Salem State, Pough said the Bulldogs are in the process of evaluating their team strengths and weaknesses. He’s most concerned about getting his offensive line back to the level they competed at last season. The unit struggled against a Rams’ defensive front Pough compared favorably with past opponents like Clemson and South Carolina.

“We’ve been kind of just letting our offensive line just kind of carry things for us,” he said. “We get a little play action going, but more than anything else, we could the run the football good enough with those guys being sort of the dominating effect in the whole scheme of things to kind of make us play systematic style of football. You get in first down. You try to get to the second and medium, you try to get to third and short. You get a first down, you keep going and eventually, you either get to the end zone or kick a field goal. You don’t keep just keep stubbing your toe over and over again like we seem to be.”

Pough challenged his offensive line to grow in maturity this week in preparation for the Gamecocks. Their development will only make the job of the skilled position players easier, according to Pough.

“We’ve got a lot of weapons,” he said. “As far as running backs, we’ve got two as good as running backs as anybody has (Will Ford and Travil Jamison) and we think we’ve got pretty good quarterbacks and wide receivers. Our tight end position, we’re struggling a little bit and we’re trying to figure some things out there still and we’re not blocking as well as like to. So we have a little bit of a problem there that we’re still trying to fix. Add to the fact that we’ve got this green center in the mix (Sam Timothy, who made his first start last Saturday) that just kind of scares us a little bit but he’s really coming on.”

Expect S.C. State to continue to insert backup quarterback Derrick Wiley into the gameplan as a change of pace to starter Malcolm Long. Wiley guided the Bulldogs on the final scoring drive against Winston-Salem State, strictly running the football off the option, while Long had a career game with 274 yards on 22 of 33 passing and one touchdown.

“We’ve got somewhat of a ‘Wildcat’ kind of mentality that the pros use,” Pough said. “With Malcolm being your prototypical style kind of quarterback, the kind who throws it a little bit and hands it off. Whereas Derrick is your college-style quarterback of the day who you can add the element of the quarterback run game in a lot easier, especially on the outside style of runs. So I think we can continue to use him some.”

When it comes to dealing with the crowd noise, look for the Bulldogs to try some methods to imitate what they will face Saturday and employ a silent count. Pough acknowledged such steps may not fully prepare S.C. State for what they will hear at Williams-Brice, but he believes his team will be more prepared than two years ago.

The same is true in regards to handling the ‘meat’ of the schedule. Pough said it’s important for the team to keep its focus, win or lose, with an Oct. 10 game at Norfolk State on the horizon, followed by a nationally-televised MEAC showdown with Florida A&M on Oct. 17, a road trip to Hampton Oct. 24 and ‘Homecoming’ against Delaware State on Oct. 31.

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