Aug. 3, 2005

With another large crowd at USC’s second football practice of the season, Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier took the microphone after the team’s flex period and thanked the crowd for coming. He then told the crowd the team was going to do something that maybe had never been done at a college football practice before – the team gave the crowd a rousing standing ovation to thank the fans for coming out.

It was the second practice this season on the USC practice fields. USC will practice from 8 – 10 p.m. through Saturday, Aug. 6. Practices are open to the public through Aug. 17. The first five days of practice are acclimation days. The players were dressed in shorts and jerseys with helmets again tonight.

After the team thanked the fans for coming, both sides of the ball got down to business. The two sides scrimmaged against each other towards the end of practice. The team ended practice by running wind sprints by position groups.

HEAD COACH Steve Spurrier:

“It was an average practice I guess. The quarterbacks didn’t throw very well tonight. Like I told them, somebody in this group is going to play quarterback. We can’t get mad at them. Hopefully we will throw it a little better tomorrow night and the next night. We threw some good ones here and there, but we threw a lot of errant passes. I’ve got to do a better job of coaching them to somehow throw more accurately. One out of five of them is going to play.”

“Little Bobby Wallace was bouncing around and jitterbugging around to where he caught the attention of most of the fans out here.”

“We had a nice good crowd. The fans were appreciative tonight.”

“I hope they weren’t nervous. They don’t need to be nervous out here in front of four or five hundred people when there are 80,000 and more that are going to be watching us play. We don’t have any excuses.”

Blake Mitchell

“You just have to prepare every day, come out and work hard, bust your tail and try to get better. We haven’t been quite as accurate as we should. We’ve had some bad balls. Playing at this level you can’t throw balls like some thrown today. But it’s going to get better.”

Fred Bennett

“We feel real good. Defensive wise we are looking good. I think practice is going real well. We are just trying to get back into it and get back in football shape. We are a well-conditioned team, we just have to build from that. I think defensively we have pretty good speed. There should be some good challenges with our receivers. It will make all of us better.”

“I’m really excited to put on the pads when we get a chance. That’s all we keep talking about is when we get a chance to put them on.”

De’Adrian Coley

“What made us quicker on defense is going up against our offensive line. Going up against guys like Na’Shan (Goddard) and Jabari (Levey) will make you work on being faster. It’s a go get-em defense.”