Mississippi State may have taken the challenge of facing Benny Snell and Kentucky a little lightly heading into last weekend’s game in Lexington. The lack of urgency from the Bulldogs was evident from the start of the game and thanks to the lack of success on offense, Mississippi State’s defense finally caved in the fourth after three quarters of defending Kentucky’s running game fairly well.

That running game is lead by Benny Snell, who has emerged as a legitimate Heisman Trophy contender following his third 100-yard rushing performance of the season last weekend (he had 165 rushing yards against MSU) and tied his career-high with four touchdowns in a single performance.

Will Muschamp appears intent on making sure his South Carolina team avoids the same mistake as MSU when they travel to Lexington this weekend.

Here’s what Muschamp had to say on the challenge facing his defense when facing Benny Snell, particularly when it comes to bringing down a running back as punishing as the Wildcat.

“You have to swarm the ball, that’s the bottom line. When you play really, really good backs, they are going to make you miss, they are going to break some tackles,” Muschamp said during his Tuesday media availability. “You have got to swarm to the football, you have to leverage the right way. The ball carrier is never down until the whistle blows, you have to finish on the ball carrier. You have to have the right mindset going into the game. That’s something that is really important when you play a back like Snell because he’s a guy you are going to have to gang tackle to get on the ground.”

The South Carolina coach was later asked a follow-up, specifically how the Gamecocks plan to mimic Snell during this week’s preparation.

“I don’t know that you can mimic — there isn’t many of him out there,” Muschamp fired back. “Again, you need to emphasize gang tackling by swarming the football. You need to emphasize finishing on the ball carrier. Those are things you emphasize every week but obviously, the antenna is up a little more because our players respect him as a football player and as a running back.”

As for the other storyline heading into this weekend’s game, South Carolina’s current losing streak to Kentucky, Muschamp shot that down immediately when asked if he addressed that with his team.

“We haven’t. It’s the 2018 South Carolina football team against the 2018 Kentucky team,” Muschamp noted.

That certainly is the case but that doesn’t mean South Carolina fans will be giving their coach a pass should the streak fail to end this weekend in Lexington.