South Carolina’s win over Mizzou was sooooooooo weird

It had weather delays, slip-and-slide conditions, enough special teams miscues for an entire season ... and basically TWO game-winning field goals in the final minutes.

South Carolina beat Missouri on Saturday in Columbia, 37-35. The game was dramatic, but it’ll primarily be remembered for being weird. The events leading up to the Gamecocks’ last-minute winning field goal offered a big enough serving of weirdness to last a whole year.

For starters, Missouri inexplicably attempted what looked like an onside kick after it scored to take a 7-0 lead early.

The kick didn’t travel the necessary 10 yards for Mizzou to recover it without a Gamecock muffing it first, and South Carolina scored three players later to tie the game. But apparently, Tigers head coach Barry Odom never called an onside kick:

“That was not — he mis-hit the ball,” Barry Odom told SEC Network reporter Kris Budden. “I know it looked like an onside. We were trying to bloop it down to the right side, mishit it and, obviously, bad situation.”

The game featured a suplex tackle by Mizzou.

At halftime, torrential rain moved through Columbia. And then things got really weird.

The rain caused the scoreboard and headsets to not work, and for a while, ESPN didn’t even have a scoreboard on the score graphic at the bottom of the screen.

In the third quarter, Missouri’s Drew Lock threw a pick six to give South Carolina a lead. It wasn’t just any pick six.

He evidently couldn’t see that his receiver on a screen pass had fallen down. You can’t really blame him, though, because look how heavy this rain was coming down:

The field was all sorts of sloppy after the rain, too:

Photo by Mike Comer/Getty Images

The conditions also created special teams play even stranger than an accidental on-side kick.

1. After Damarea Crockett’s 70-yard touchdown run was called back because the replay official zoomed in to the pixels to determine he had stepped out of bounds at the 11, and after the Tigers committed three penalties to knock them out of field goal range, Mizzou punter Corey Fatony plain dropped a punt snap, and South Carolina recovered it near midfield. That set up a go-ahead field goal for the Gamecocks.
2. After the above pick six put the Gamecocks up 31-23, Mizzou drove to the SC 2. But after a sloppy snap resulted in lost yardage, the Tigers had to settle for a 25-yard Tucker McCann field goal attempt. He missed it wide right, though you could hardly see the ball on television.
3. On the second play of the fourth quarter, South Carolina began its own series of gaffes. Joseph Charlton’s punt was blocked by MU’s Tre Williams, setting up a Tiger touchdown.
4. South Carolina got the ball back and went three-and-out, and Charlton mishandled a punt snap of his own. He tried to run for the first down and came up eight yards short.
5. After Lock’s second interception of the second half — Jamyest Williams plucked the ball off of the belly of Mizzou’s Kam Scott while both were on the ground (it looked like Williams’ foot might have been out of bounds when he secured the ball, but replay review upheld the call) — South Carolina elected to attempt a fake field goal instead of asking Parker White to attempt a 51-yarder. Mizzou stopped it short.

Then came the lightning. The game was delayed with Mizzou driving and 2:41 remaining. The delay lasted well more than an hour.

Mizzou’s mascot, Truman the Tiger, was not impressed.

After all that ...

...a game addled by special teams miscues ended the only way possible: with McCann making a FIFTY-SEVEN YARDER to give Missouri the lead ... and with White giving Carolina the win with a 33-yarder with two seconds left. Of course. And that wasn’t even all:

OK, that was all. Maybe.