April 2, 2005

The USC football team held a two hour scrimmage Saturday morning in very windy conditions. The scrimmage ran 92 plays at Williams-Brice Stadium. There were over 3,000 Gamecock fans in attendance.

Coach Spurrier announced the next scrimmage will be on Wednes., April 6 at 4:30 pm in Williams-Brice Stadium and it is open to the public.

Coach Spurrier commented on the scrimmage afterwards “It was a pretty ragged scrimmage, especially for the offensive guys. It was very windy and very hard to throw, but we struggled quite a bit on offense. I am very disappointed that we weren’t more efficient, but we will have to wait and see and coach better as well. The defense did some good things here and there. We probably tried to throw too much in this wind. We are waiting on a quarterback to step up. We don’t know about Mike Rathe, but right now we are waiting for one to step up, but we will be all right. The O line did some good things today.

“We will need to get a lot tougher. We are tough on defense and a few on offense, but we could get a lot tougher. Noah Whiteside is probably the toughest guy on offense right now. He loves to compete and hopefully we can get everyone out here loving to compete.

“We like to play our scrimmages in the stadium with the fans. We like to see who likes to compete in front of some people and you can do that in here.”

The following are some of the statistics from the scrimmage:

The quarterbacks:

Mike Rathe was 1 of 8 (seven yards); Blake Mitchell was 4 of 6 (55 yards); Brett Nichols was 3 of 4 (24 yards); and Antonio Heffner was 5 of 12 (72 yards) with 1 INT and 1 TD.

The top receivers:

Noah Whiteside: 47 yards (3 catches), Syvelle Newton 21 yards (1 catch) and Le’Moriell Williams: 39 yards (3 catches)

The top rushers:

Daccus Turman: 59 yards (13 rushes), Albert Ashcraft: 125 (13 rushes, 70 long), Jermaine Sims: 29 yards (9 rushes) and Antonio Lamar: 29 yards (6 rushes)

Defensive Stats:

Orus Lambert: 5 tackles; Chris Hampton: 5 tackles; Ricardo Hurley: 6 tackles; Chris Tucker: 5 tackles, 2 sacks; Trent Usher: 6 tackles; Brook Antonio: 5 tackles; Seth Edwards: 3 tackle, 3 TFL and 3 sacks; David Laggis: 2 TFL, 2 sacks, 1 FR; Ty Erving: 2 PBU; Fred Bennett: 1 INT; Stanley Doughty: 1 FR; Jordin Lindsay: 1 FR

Updated Injury Report:

OG Eric Stroman: reinjured foot (day to day), DL Charles Silas: sore neck (day to day); RB Cory Boyd: left hamstring (day-to-day), DL Matt Raysor: right ankle (day-to-day), WR Travis Lee: neck strain (out). WR Michael Flint (shoulder) and CB Fred Bennett (shoulder) are limited. OL William Brown (low back strain) and OL John Paul Gillis (back surgery) are out.