A late interception might not have been the sequence that doomed South Carolina in Saturday’s 35-31 loss to Florida. The cracks in a would-be victory first showed up late in the first half.

The Gamecocks churned out the yards seemingly at will until coach Will Muschamp stepped on the brakes with 46 seconds remaining before halftime. With two timeouts left, Muschamp elected to kneel on his own 32-yard line. That proved to be the first red flag in a winnable game at Florida.

The second came at a time that Muschamp shows plenty of pride in: the fourth quarter.

Two weeks ago after a three-point win over Tennessee, Muschamp was proud to note how well the Gamecocks have played in close games.

“Our guys understand in close games how to win,” he said at the time.

Last week after beating Ole Miss by four, he explained that closing a game is something that should become part of a team’s identity.

“You recruit it, No. 1. You recruit guys that like ball. You recruit guys that have character. You recruit guys that have physical and mental toughness, and that’s part of the recruiting process, it’s part of the evaluation.”

But that fourth-quarter character and effort was missing in action in Gainesville as South Carolina registered just 23 yards in the final frame, all rushing.

The Gamecocks dropped to 5-4 and 4-4 in the SEC, and the recent four-game stretch has been a microcosm of the season. All four have been decided by four points or fewer, and they are 2-2 in those games.

For three quarters Saturday, it seemed as if South Carolina had turned a corner and was on its way to winning a third straight game. But Muschamp fell to 1-9 against ranked teams since he took the South Carolina job, as the Gamecocks again showed an inability to punch above their weight class.

The glaring stat was the 367 yards allowed on the ground on 62 carries, as the Gators had a pair of 100-yard rushers (Jordan Scarlett 159, Lamical Perine 107). Florida had 528 total yards.

Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

That, to Muschamp, was the key difference in the game, because he said his team played well enough offensively to win.

“Can’t stop the run, going to have a hard time winning, that’s the bottom line,” Muschamp said. “You give up 367 yards rushing — we had guys at the point of attack and got whipped up front in the tackling. It was very, very frustrating. I thought the key going in was tackling their backs. We had guys there, and can’t get guys on the ground consistently well. We stay on the field on third downs because they had manageable down and distances the entire game.”

Put simply, “We got whipped up front. Call it what it is.”

Perhaps most troubling is this effort was not an outlier, according to the coach. It’s a trend.

“It’s pretty much a reflection of where we’ve been,” Muschamp said. “The issue you’re getting into is we’re not making plays at the second level. That creates explosive runs.”

That’s why he described the loss as “gut-wrenching. One you’ll carry for a while. As hard as we prepare and as much as we put into it, it’s going to hurt. It’s frustrating.”

Coaching strategy and fundamentals were put under a spotlight. Making glaring tackling mistakes in mid November is an alarming turn of events, whether it be poor approaches or bad angles.

There were plenty of positives for the offense, especially in the first half, and largely without significant contributions from running backs Ty’Son Williams or Rico Dowdle.

“We were running the same things we did early in the game and had a lot of success,” Muschamp said. “We called the same things we called to get to that point. We didn’t change the mind-set at all.”

The Gamecocks so far have missed the mind-set to get considerably above .500. Against the rest of the SEC East, South Carolina is 3-3 this season, and only the Vanderbilt win was by more than three points.