Marcus Lattimore Injury Will Make or Break Gamecocks' Chances in Deep SEC

The good news for South Carolina is that they beat Mississippi State 14-12 in what had potential to be a serious trap game for the Gamecocks.

That's not a particularly dominant win, but any win against teams like Mississippi State is good enough.

No, the problem wasn't that they squeaked out a two-point win. The problem is that star running back Marcus Lattimore suffered what appeared to be a serious knee injury in the fourth quarter.

Josh Kendall of CBS Sports reported the injury. After that, reports came out on Twitter detailing how bad the injury might be.

Saturday, October 15 at 3:32 p.m. EDT

Chad Reuter of NFLDraftScout.com and CBSSports.com was one of several people to report that Lattimore was hobbling on crutches.

South Carolina is off next week, which is a positive for them. But if Lattimore misses any serious time, they are going to be in a lot of trouble for the rest of the SEC schedule.

The Gamecocks already have one conference loss and still have games against ranked Arkansas and Clemson teams, although Clemson is not a conference rival.

ESPN currently lists Lattimore as No. 10 on their Heisman Watch List. That's a dark horse Heisman Trophy candidate, but missing one of the top 10 players in the country is going to hurt this team in a bad way.

If Lattimore was on crutches, there is a very good chance that he will miss a couple of weeks, if not significantly more.

It's too bad for all parties involved. Everyone wants to win, but nobody wants to see a serious injury. Lattimore is just a sophomore, so he will have time to recover. Still, this potentially derails a great season. Obviously, South Carolina will desperately miss their star back if it comes to that.