Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason admittedly didn’t have many answers following his team’s 37-14 loss to South Carolina.

He reached back for another reference to a “street fight,” which was one way he described the game earlier in the week.

“They won the street fight,” Mason said. “There’s no doubt about that. We got off to another slow start.”

Vanderbilt fell behind 10-0 early, and didn’t score at all in the second half.

“I just saw my football team struggle to get off the field defensively,” Mason said. “We struggled offensively to stay on the field, it was just one of those days.”

The win was South Carolina’s 10th straight in the series.

“We turned the ball over at critical times,” Mason said. “Didn’t respond defensively to those times when we needed to flip momentum.”

“We had some chances later in this ballgame, and just couldn’t find a way,” he said. “Just was not consistent enough. Couldn’t gain enough ground, couldn’t make one more play.”

Vanderbilt will return to action next week against Tennessee State.

“I thought we had a chance to push this program forward in 2018, and we still have opportunities, but this is another missed one,” he said.