Oct. 24, 2005

The South Carolina football squad began preparations for Saturday’s Southeastern Conference battle at Tennessee with a 90-minute workout on the Bluff Road practice fields Monday night. Saturday’s 7:45 p.m. ET contest will be televised nationally on ESPN2. Those who wore yellow “limited contact” jerseys included: Chris Hampton (ankle), Tremaine Tyler (ankle), Cody Wells (neck sprain), Stanley Doughty (knee sprain), Andy Boyd (knee) and William Brown (lower back strain).

Following Monday’s practice, head coach Steve Spurrier met with the media:

“A little cooler tonight, but other than that just a normal Monday night practice.”

On the tailback situation without Syvelle Newton: “Mike Davis is back in the game with Bobby Wallace and Daccus (Turman) at one-back, so we’re back the same as we were before Syvelle. Mike seemed to be moving quicker tonight. I think they got more juke and step to them than they’ve used this year, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

On the injury: “We all feel bad for Syvelle but there’s not anything we can do about it. So we’re going to move on and hopefully Syvelle will rehab it, have a successful surgery and come back stronger and ready to go in 2006. That’s all we can do right now. That’s part of football. It’s very unfortunate. That’s why you try to play the best you can because you don’t know if you’re going to play much more.”

On going to Tennessee: “We’re just trying to see if we can give them a good game up there and maybe the ball will bounce our way and we’ll see what happens. They haven’t played super, but they haven’t played poorly. They’ve lost to three good teams just like we have. They’ve got a lot of fast, strong defensive players. They’re fast and quick. I think they’re number one against the run.”

On the play of Thomas Coleman and the offensive line: “Thomas did ok in there. He held his own ok. He’s starting again this week. The same group is starting this week.”