COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Car­oli­na now gets to see if changes on offense the Game­cocks have made since last fall will trans­late into wins.

The Game­cocks open the sea­son Sat­ur­day night against No. 16 Ten­nessee. They lost five of their final six games last fall to fin­ish 4–8, main­ly because of their sput­ter­ing offense that was able to pro­duce just one touch­down in its last 12 quarters.

So Will Muschamp hired his third offen­sive coor­di­na­tor in five sea­sons in ex-Col­orado State coach Mike Bobo to charge up the attack with the goal crys­tal clear.

“Scor­ing points,” Muschamp said. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to be more productive.”

South Car­oli­na will have new starters at quar­ter­back, tail­back, tight end and two of three receiv­er spots.

Muschamp said last season’s prob­lems took a toll on the entire team, lead­ing to lack­lus­ter show­ings in loss­es to Appalachi­an State, Texas A&M and Clem­son in Novem­ber where the Game­cocks were outscored 88–24.

“We lost a lot of con­fi­dence which not only affects your offense, it affects your foot­ball team,” Muschamp said. “It affects everything.”

Along with Bobo, new quar­ter­back Collin Hill also trans­ferred in from Col­orado State and will make his first South Car­oli­na start Sat­ur­day night.

Kevin Har­ris or Deshaun Fen­wick will start at tail­back after the depar­ture of last year’s lead­ing rush­ers in seniors Tavien Feast­er and Rico Dowdle.

Senior Nick Muse will open at tight end with red­shirt fresh­man Keveon Mullins get­ting the call in a two tight end alignment.

At receiv­er, Xavier Leg­ette and one-time quar­ter­back Dak­ere­on Joyn­er are new­com­ers at two start­ing spots along with senior Shi Smith, who is expect­ed to take over the big-play role held by last year’s top wide­out, Bryan Edwards.

Hill said South Car­oli­na is ver­sa­tile and will do many things on offense.

“We def­i­nite­ly have a lot of guys who can make plays in the tight end room, receiv­er room,” Hill said. “My job is just to try and get us in the right plays, the right pro­tec­tions and get it to a guy who can make a play.”

Muschamp, who begins his fifth sea­son, thought he had the right com­bi­na­tion before. He called on his for­mer Flori­da offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Kurt Rop­er when Muschamp took the Game­cocks job after the 2015 season.

But two years lat­er, Rop­er was out after South Car­oli­na aver­aged just 24 points a game (12th in the SEC) and receivers coach McClen­don was pro­mot­ed with the promise of more firepower.

Again, things flamed out — and a change was made — as South Car­oli­na aver­aged 22.4 points a game last sea­son, also 12th in the 14-team SEC.

The uptick is appar­ent in prac­tice, South Car­oli­na junior cor­ner­back Jaycee Horn said.

“It’s been real dif­fer­ent this camp, they’ve been giv­ing us a lot of com­pe­ti­tion,” Horn said of the offense. “I feel like this offense is very explo­sive and one play can go the distance.”

Ten­nessee head coach Jere­my Pruitt has been friends with Bobo since both worked on Georgia’s staff. Pruitt said Bobo is as com­pet­i­tive on the field as he is on the golf course or shoot­ing pool.

“He wants to win in every­thing that he does,” Pruitt said. “He’s going to have a great game plan. His kids are going to play hard. They’ll play togeth­er, so it will be a chal­lenge for us.”

Muschamp said the offense strug­gled a year ago in sev­er­al key areas, includ­ing pro­duc­tion when reach­ing the oppo­nents’ 20-yard line and yards per pass play (7 yards) which he called “hor­ri­ble.”

He’s been pleased with Bobo’s plan and how well play­ers have tak­en to it.

“We’ve had more suc­cess offen­sive­ly in a fall camp than we have had in a long time here,” Muschamp said.

AP Sports Writer Tere­sa Walk­er con­tributed to this report.