Aug. 29, 2008

Recap | Final Stats | Notes | Photo Gallery

South Carolina

Head Coach Steve Spurrier
I appreciate our fans being patient with our offense. And fortunately we have a pretty good defense to win games. NC state is a pretty good team but we will be facing harder competition this season and we have a lot of work to do.

It was a struggle but thank goodness we had our defense. They pitched a shutout. I gave the game ball to Ellis Johnson. He’s the first defensive coordinator to pitch a shutout here. It’s a pretty good start to the season.

I thought we struggled early and then obviously late we played very well. I don’t know if NC State got tired or we played a little better. But we definitely didn’t play very well early.

I’m certainly proud of our defense but they will definitely be challenged more this season. It was a good win. But our offense needs a lot of work.

I thought Ellis Johnson and Ray Rychleski were super as coaches and I thought Tommy Beecher and I struggled.

Chris Smelley
It was good to be able to get in. The offense seemed to pick up. I don’t feel like I did anything really all that special. The offensive line stepped up and opened up some holes. Mike Davis was able to get a few runs. It was really good to see Moe Brown get a long catch. We’ve been wanting to get one to him.

I went out and did everything I was supposed to do. We’ll wait and see what Coach decides. If it’s my turn, then I will play. It was extra motivation for us hearing about the five game losing streak on ESPN. It helped us to go out and play hard.

Captain Munnerlyn
It felt good to go out and get a shutout in our first win. Coach Johnson is a good coach. He believes all of us should go out and get to the ball. He says that if all eleven get to the ball good things will happen. We felt like we had to go out and get turnovers and set up the offense with good field position.

Eric Norwood
All of the hard work we did during camp helped with the conditioning for tonight. I hope this game sets the tone and shows what we’re capable of doing. It feels good to win again.

North Carolina State

Head Coach Tom O’Brien
The game was fine until that last series where we fumbled the ball at the half and then the first series of the second half, we kind of let things get away from us. From there it seemed to go downhill, and then we just ran out of gas on defense at the end. A lot of it was due to the ineptness of the offense. Certainly we have to solve some problems there.

Certainly we have to re-evaulate everything we’ve done. You have to look at the defense and say for three quarters they played pretty good. They were put in a lot of tough situations by the offense. So we have to go back to the drawing board and see what we have to do.

There are a lot of different things we have to take care of if we’re going to start winning football games.

I think they’re excellent at defense. They are powerful.

Jimmaul Simmons
We’ve got some work to do. The defense played well, but we still have a long way to go if we’re going to be a good ACC team.

We still have a whole lot of work to do. This game was a chance to show what we had. We just need to give more effort as a whole team.

Daniel Evans
They didn’t do anything we weren’t expecting. Definitely give them credit for blanking us.

On the injury to Russell Wilson
We don’t know what’s going on medically. To see a guy out there like that, it’s hard. But, the hangover from that wasn’t why we lost today. Other than losing a great player, I don’t think there was an emotional hangover that caused us to lose.

Andre Brown
We put the defense in a bad situation. Our defense played a great game. They kept fighting back and getting the ball for us, but we couldn’t get in. The defense played a solid game.