Sometimes in life and in sports, you wish there was a reset button, an opportunity for a fresh start.

If there was a team in the SEC this year that would take advantage of the chance to start the 2014 all over again, it would be the South Carolina Gamecocks.

Faced with a number of high expectations as the preseason No. 8 ranked team in the country, the Gamecocks have underwhelmed with their on-field play. And now they’re staring college football irrelevance in the face as a .500 team and three losses in conference play. Halfway through the season, the preseason favorite to win the SEC East is behind the 8-ball when it comes to claiming the division title.

With their goal of reaching Atlanta virtually out of reach, a once-talked about darkhorse playoff contender has slipped back into the shadows of insignificance.

Of course, that cannot change this weekend alone against an FCS team like Furman. On the surface, the Gamecocks are heavily favored and it’ll be looked at as no more than a standard tune-up game for a much tougher opponent in Auburn next week. However, this weekend’s game can represent a fresh start for the Gamecocks — an opportunity to start over.

RELATED: Spoiled by success, Gamecocks re-evaluate season goals

Furman travels to Columbia at an opportune time for South Carolina. Fresh off a bye week, South Carolina is quickly looking to put its last game behind them — a crushing 45-38 loss to an up-start Kentucky team.

“Guys really want to finish the year the best they possibly can,” head coach Steve Spurrier said earlier in the week. “We had some good practices last week and had a good one yesterday, and hopefully we’ll continue throughout this week.”

During the second half of the season, South Carolina will conclude its SEC season with three remaining games against Auburn, Tennessee and Florida. All three games will be a challenge for the Gamecocks, especially a road game at Jordan-Hare in two weeks, but at this all-important midway point in the season, South Carolina has an opportunity to catch its breath and simplify things. For a team looking for a turnaround, that’s sometimes all they need — a moment to regroup.

“We need to really concern ourselves with how we play, just making sure we get in the habit of playing sound, fundamental football,” Spurrier said. “Still, we have plenty of players and we’re hopefully ready to play our best this week.”

South Carolina endured two gut-wrenching losses over the last three weeks to Missouri and Kentucky. Both the Tigers and Wildcats came from behind in the fourth quarter and stole a win before the Gamecocks even knew what happened. In a situation like that, the tendency is to overcompensate and try to do too much in the following games, which is a formula that often does not work.

If the Gamecocks can slow things down against Furman and play “sound, fundamental football” as Spurrier suggests, it could be the exact frame of mind change South Carolina needs right now. For the HBC, he sees no fight lost in his team and believes his players are capable of taking advantage of a fresh start this weekend and finishing the season off strong.

“I think our guys worked pretty hard yesterday. I think they want to finish with a good season. We do have a lot of senior players, fourth-year players, hopefully senior leadership will kick in and we can start playing better. We’ve been pretty fortunate around here to win our last five and six games, whether or not we can do it again is going to be a task, but we have to try to.

“We have to see if we can become a lot better team starting this week.”