SEC Unfiltered: Saturday is Vanderbilt's best shot to end an embarrassing streak

Welcome to SEC Unfiltered, the USA TODAY NETWORK's newsletter on SEC sports. Look for this newsletter in your inbox Monday through Friday. Today, Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes takes over:

Any talk of "should have" goes out of the window when you've lost 25 consecutive Southeastern Conference games. At that point, there's not much you can say. Nothing fluky about 25 games. You've been exactly what that number says.

But having said that …

Vanderbilt probably should have won last season's game at South Carolina.

The Commodores let that one get away. They were driving for a touchdown that would have pushed their lead to two scores with about two minutes remaining. Instead, they settled for a chip-shot field goal and went up six. Then South Carolina needed only 59 seconds to go 75 yards in eight plays, scoring a touchdown with only 37 seconds remaining. The extra point was the difference:

South Carolina 21, Vanderbilt 20.

In a season full of lopsided SEC results for Vanderbilt, this was a rare outlier that provided hope entering Clark Lea's second season. And it makes an interesting prelude to Saturday's rematch, which looks like the Commodores' last, best chance to break their SEC drought in 2022.

Look ahead: Winning at Kentucky seems a stretch, as does beating Florida. And Vanderbilt fans won't even want to watch what this Tennessee offense does to the Dores in Nashville.

But South Carolina's Gamecocks have been weirdly unpredictable in Shane Beamer's second season. They are 5-3, having beaten Kentucky and Texas A&M to jump into the national polls.

Soon as they did, though, they were blindsided at home by Missouri, 23-10, last weekend. The same Missouri that barely survived Vanderbilt 17-14 the previous weekend.

The Commodores have since had a second bye week — they had two since they opened the season early at Hawaii — before getting this home game at night against a South Carolina team that's coming off a rough defeat and had a close call with Vanderbilt a season ago.

I'm not saying it's about to finally happen for the Commodores in an SEC game.

I'm just saying if it is going to happen this season, this looks to be as good a chance as any.