Swinney confident Clemson isn't looking past South Carolina

This weekend No. 1 Clemson will head to Williams-Brice Stadium to take on a South Carolina that has gone 3-8 and had its coach resign midway through the season, but don’t expect the Tigers (11-0) to look past the Gamecocks come kick off on Saturday.

“They’re a very tough team. Heck, just look at their games. They have a lot of good players down there. A lot of good players,” Swinney said. “Pharoh Cooper is as good as there is in the SEC. Florida they took to the wire (24-14), Tennessee (27-4) they took to the wire, Texas A&M (35-28) they took to the wire. These guys are very capable.”

Clemson’s ACC championship game with North Carolina might be right around the corner, but Swinney said his team is not looking ahead.

“That seems to be the question I get every week. When we’re getting ready to play … I don’t know, whoever. Every week it’s been a trap game. Every week it’s the same rhetoric that I get.

“At some point people are going to quit asking me that because we’ve shown up and played every single week, so I don’t know why you would think we would not do that this week.”

Swinney said ball security will be the key come Saturday.

“We need to come out on the right side of the turnover margin,” Swinney said. “When we’ve lost to these guys we’ve been incredibly negative in that margin. We have to do a good job of taking care of the ball.”