Oct. 21, 2014

South Carolina Head Coach Steve Spurrier
Opening Statement
“We’re going to Auburn, the Loveliest Village on the Plains. Auburn is a good team as we all know, went to the national championship game last year, had a wonderful chance to win it, but couldn’t do it. I think they’re No. 5 in the country right now, lost to Mississippi State in a game that they could’ve won, but got stymied in the red zone had to kick some field goals. Mississippi State had a very good game and they’re No. 1 in the country, but (Auburn runs) the ball extremely well and are certainly very capable of throwing the ball. Their defense is very solid, Ellis Johnson has been doing it a long time. He has an excellent bunch of athletes, well-coached, so it’ll be a challenge for us. We have to bring our “A” game and see if we can get a break or two and see what happens at Auburn Saturday night.

“We should be getting a few of our injured guys back. Brandon Wilds should be (ready) to play. David Johnson, defensive end, was injured the last three or four games should be back. J.T. Surratt is still a little doubtful. The bad news is [Rory] “Busta” Anderson, we think tore his tricep, his other tricep, and could be out 2-3 weeks, or longer, so that was some bad news that we received yesterday after the MRI showed that he had a tear. Busta was having a good year. Jerrell Adams will probably be the tight end, get a few more balls thrown his way. Cody Gibson has done a good job in there also.”

On the backup quarterbacks
“The guys struggled a little bit, but we had some bad plays there at the end. Connor Mitch had that one play we ran, our tight end didn’t block the right guy. Other than that, our protection broke down a couple times. We didn’t have the right protection on another play, so it was a combination of some guys missing some calls and the quarterbacks, Perry [Orth] had one knocked down, the guy just happened to get his hand up. They’ve been doing okay. How well they’d do if they had to play a whole bunch? I don’t know. We haven’t gotten to that yet and hopefully we can keep Dylan [Thompson] healthy for the rest of the year.

On where he rates Auburn as a place to play
“They’re right there amongst the best, like our place, LSU, the Swamp. Almost everyone has a tough place to play. They love football at Auburn. The state of Alabama loves it just as much as we do in the state of South Carolina. One of the magazines had our state as the top college football state in the country prior to the season. I think Alabama has taken it over as the season progresses. It’s a tough place, but there’s a lot of tough places.”

On going into Auburn to play No. 5
“You have to believe that you have a chance, if your team plays very well. We’re going in with the idea that we’ll battle with them. We have to play very well offensively, defensively and on special teams, maybe hopefully they’ll drop the ball a little bit, something good like that happens for us. But like I said last week, only pressure on us is to play the best we can. Try to play the best we can. Try to coach the best we can and see what happens.”

On Gus Malzahn calling his own plays
“I think what they’ve done is run the ball extremely well against everybody, just about everybody they’ve played. He has an excellent scheme. I think most all of us coaches, offensive coaches, that call plays, we sort of all like each other because we have so much in common. Hugh Freeze, Dan Mullen, it seems like we’ve got more head coaches calling plays now than hardly any time I remember.”

On the concerns of Auburn’s rushing attack
“It is whatever it’s going to be. We’ll use a bunch of guys up there and see if we can slow them down and stop them. They’ll obviously make some yards, but we beat Georgia. Georgia is actually number one in the conference running the ball and Auburn is probably two or three. You always have to have hope that good can happen like happened for us in the Georgia game.”

On what Auburn does to run the ball so effectively
“They have good blockers and a good scheme of things. Some say they put a lot of guys in motion, but they’re blocking a similar scheme, and their quarterback is a runner too. When your quarterback can run, that’s a whole new thing for every defense. College football and a little bit in the NFL, they’re going to a little more quarterback runs.”

On the health of Jonathan Walton and Bryson Allen-Williams
“Bryson Allen-Williams was back practicing last night. Jonathan Walton we think should be okay by this weekend. He had a slight concussion last week but his symptoms are much improved.”