Oct. 6, 2005

The South Carolina football squad continued preparations for Saturday’s 1 p.m. Southeastern Conference battle with Kentucky with a 90-minute practice Thursday afternoon. Following the practice session, head coach Steve Spurrier took the team into Williams-Brice Stadium before addressing the media:

“We just wanted to look around in the stadium and realize how fortunate we are to be able to coach and play in front of 80,000 people who love their team like we have here. Sometimes you should appreciate how fortunate you are in life to play in front of that many people. Sometimes when the game starts you don’t think about those things. Hopefully our guys will represent themselves, our university and our team with an all-out effort this week.

“Kentucky’s ready to play. I’ve seen Kentucky play extremely well. They should have beaten Tennessee last year – they had Tennessee on the ropes. They’ve had a lot of teams on the ropes. They’re going to come and give their best shot at us.

“(Blake Mitchell) should be (the starting quarterback) unless something happens to his ankle between now and then. Blake’s scheduled to go about as long as he can, then we’ll go from there. If (Syvelle Newton) needed to play, I think he’d do pretty well.

“Both teams look at it as an opportunity to win a conference game so it could be a very interesting game. Who knows what will happen.

“We’re very healthy for this time of year. We’ve had very few injuries.”