The game was ugly to watch and both teams are terrible.

That’s been the overwhelming national reaction to South Carolina’s 13-10 win over Vanderbilt on Thursday. But if that’s your main takeaway from watching a young South Carolina team overcome a 10-point deficit on the road, then I guess you and I watched different games and have been for the past three seasons. While I’m not going to sit here and tell you that a game in which two teams combined to gain 550 yards made for thrilling football, dismissing it as a meaningless display of ineptitude ignores important context as it relates to Will Muschamp’s attempt to turn the Gamecocks around and the SEC East in general.

The Gamecocks’ entire offensive plan last year was to get the ball to Pharoh Cooper and hope he did something awesome. Well, that plan plays for the Rams now, and it was not at all clear where USC’s offensive production might come from. Combine that with Muschamp's poor reputation for fostering offensive talent, and this seemed like it could be a recipe for disaster.

Still, there was enough incoming skill position talent that you could talk yourself into the Gamecocks getting better as the year went along. But any hope of USC fielding an average offense seemed a year or two off, at the least. So the fact that the Gamecocks had a handful of freshmen show big-play potential against the best defense in the SEC East isn’t a mere piece of trivia.

It means Muschamp might have been right when he said he’d still be at Florida if he’d hired Kurt Roper instead of Charlie Weis. And that is incredibly meaningful for projecting whether Muschamp’s time in Columbia will be a success.

While the flashes of brilliance shown by Edwards and McIlwain were exciting, what the Gamecocks did on defense is far more significant for how the 2016 season will play out. South Carolina only gave up 3.72 yards per play on Thursday night.

In a season opener. Against an SEC opponent. On the road.

Mind you, the Commodores aren’t exactly the 1999 Rams, but a defensive performance of that quality against an opponent of any kind is noteworthy. The Gamecocks haven’t equaled or bettered 3.72 yards per play allowed in an SEC road game since Oct. 2012 (against a Will Muschamp team that somehow won 44-11), when their defense was littered with future NFL players.

One of the biggest variables for South Carolina’s season was the degree to which bad coaching was the cause of their struggles in 2015. If you just look at the names on the Gamecocks' depth chart, the defense is full of former four-star prospects. If you look at the box scores, you see a bunch of scrubs. Could a coherent defensive plan from Will Muschamp and Travaris Robinson help those players reach their blue-chip potential? Four quarters into the 2016 season, the answer seems to be more "yes" than "no."

Entering the season, the worst case scenario for South Carolina that it would flirt with the same 3-9 record it posted in 2015 and be the doormat of the SEC. Under those circumstances, it would be difficult for Will Muschamp to walk into living rooms and convince the country’s best players that things would be different for him in Columbia than they were in Gainesville. The best case scenario was 6-6 or maybe 7-5 with some breaks. If the Gamecocks are closer to their best-case scenario than their worst-case, as they appeared to be on Thursday, it bodes well for Muschamp in the long-term and gives reason to think they might even be able to play spoiler in the SEC East with an upset of Georgia, Florida, or Tennessee.

After Mississippi State and Kentucky laid eggs against Sun Belt and C-USA teams in their season openers, Vanderbilt might be the best team South Carolina has to play during the month of September. So if on Oct. 1 you find yourself scratching your head as to how the Gamecocks managed to start 4-0 or 3-1, know that the signs were there – you just weren't looking at them.

Connor Tapp is a national college football writer for 247Sports. Follow him on Twitter at @MeetMeeAtTapps.