“Upset” beams like a klieg light all around this game.

South Carolina has been shaky against the run, permitting 169.8 yards per game. The Gamecocks’ turnover margin (-5) is down there in Vandy’s neck of the woods (-7). They don’t get off the field well — opponents convert 48.5 percent of third downs against them, the worst such percentage in the SEC.

The ’Dores, meanwhile, are riding a wave of confidence after their comeback last week. Vandy realized against Auburn that it can march against an SEC team; it learned in Oxford that it can beat an SEC team.

Still, for as many strides as the Commodores have made fundamentally under Johnson, the mistakes of youth dog this team. As Johnson observed Monday, “We’ve got to be on our ‘A’ game more than anybody else in the league. We’ve got such a narrow margin of error. Florida sometimes can play bad and win. We cannot play bad and win. If we had played bad against Furman, we would have lost.”

The South Carolina Gamecocks can be had. They should be had this weekend. Somehow, they’ll sneak out of Nashville with a wooly ‘W.’