Nov. 20, 2007
Opening Statement
“We’re looking forward to Saturday with a 7 o’clock kickoff on ESPN. Hopefully our tam will be ready to platy the best we can this year and give Clemson a good game. We all know where they are and where we are. They had a heartbreaker last week, and two weeks ago we got thumped a lot like the last two games. We’re challenging our players to lay it on the line, play with a lot of effort and see if we can be more competitive Saturday night.”
On confidence in ability to win at South Carolina
Certainly. I hate to get ahead of ourselves, but at the same time you have to mention the future every time we have a little slump like we’re in now. Our big recruiting class was last year. We certainly believe they can develop into good players. They’re not ready yet, but we believe they will develop.”
“For us to fight for the SEC, it’s going to be difficult with Georgia, Florida and Tennessee in our division, but some years if we win the close games and it breaks right, hopefully we’ll be strong enough to win the SEC. That is our goal, to win the SEC. We weren’t strong enough this year. We thought maybe we were when the ball was bouncing our way against Georgia and had good wins against Kentucky and Mississippi State, but we haven’t performed well since then.”
“The head coach is responsible for everything. I know that. They head coach everywhere knows that. Our job is to make whatever changes we can and try to do the best we can to give our team a chance to be successful.”
On playing at a higher level
“The way we’ve performed lately, our big concern is getting guys to play at a high level and play smarter. Hopefully we will be smarter and give ourselves a chance to win the game, if we’re capable. On the other side, we can’t allow those two running backs to romp up and down the field the way everyone else has romped against us the last two games.”
On attitude
“As a team we don’t perform at a real high, intense level. All you have to do is look at guys cover kickoffs. I watch other teams and see about nine guys busting their tales down there. All you have to do is watch their arms. If their arms are moving as fast as they can, then you know they’re hustling down there and busting their tales to cover kickoffs. I wish I could say we have nine that do that, but we don’t.”
On seniors
“We’ve got really good seniors playing that are playing their last game here at home. We have Cory Boyd, Andy Boyd, Web Brown, the center, Lanard Stafford, the walk-on has been a very solid player at fullback. Defensively, Casper Brinkley and Cody Wells, a couple of defensive backs Chris Hampton and Brandon Isaac have played quite a bit back there. We have some seniors, but not many. We’ve got to train these young guys and see if they can respond.”
On rebounding from four game skid
“Winning breeds more winning and unfortunately losing can do the same thing. You have to shake it off. You have to do what you can to learn from your losses and try to move on. We have tried our best to do that and we’ll see what happens here Saturday night.”
On C.J. Spiller and James Davis
“We watched Boston College play and watched a lot of guys play against them. We’ll have a plan in place and hopefully our players can respond to the plan in place, get off blocks, make tackles, hustle.”
On USC-Clemson rivalry
“It’s very similar to Florida-FSU and Georgia-Georgia Tech – in-state schools going at it in different conferences. Clemson is a lot like us in the fact that they pretty much talk about trying to win their division and win their conference championship, and in the last week of the season we talk about beating each other.”
On if preseason goals have been achieved
“We haven’t won seven games yet. That was our first goal, win seven and win a bowl game. There’s still a few (goals) out there.”
On defensive toughness
“We haven’t been very tough the last two games, let’s put it that way. Can we rise up and be tough and compete? I guess we’re going to find out Saturday night. I can’t answer that until we come in here after the ballgame Saturday night.”
On last year’s rivalry game
“That was a strange game last year. They rushed for a lot of yards, but offensively that was probably our best game of the year because we were able to stay on the field.”
“We were 6-5 last year, did y’all know that, going into this game. You would think we were 10-0 (last year) and now we’re 0-10 the way the attitude is. We actually had the same record. I remember we were 5-5 and one of our coaches said, `We have got to beat Middle Tennessee State.’ We played one of our best games really in three years against Middle Tennessee State and had some carryover into the Clemson game.”