Oct. 26, 2005

The South Carolina football squad continued preparations for Saturday’s Southeastern Conference battle at Tennessee with a two-hour workout on the Bluff Road practice fields Wednesday afternoon. Saturday’s 7:45 p.m. ET contest will be televised nationally on ESPN2. Following Wednesday’s practice, Head Coach Steve Spurrier met with the media:

“Another Wednesday practice – the weather turned nice for us – no one was freezing today. It was nice out here.”

On quarterback Blake Mitchell: “He looked ok, nothing spectacular that we can brag too much about, but he did ok. Antonio (Heffner) threw some good balls today.”

On whether his adrenaline picks up going to Tennessee: “My adrenaline is to try to get the quarterback and the offense to get to play a lot better than the last time we were on TV. The last time we were pretty sorry at Auburn. Hopefully we can put on a little better performance offensively and defensively and the entire team. We were all bad that night. To me it’s another big game, it’s a conference game. We’ve got four more – we’d love to win all of them. We’d love to win at least two of them. And this is one of the four.”

On whether the team’s attitude is different going into the Tennessee game: “I hope not. We try to treat them all the same. Every game is a big game. This is the most important game of my life. And last week Vandy was the most important game of my life. And next week Arkansas will be, because that’s the one we have control over. We’re going to try our best to play our best and coach our best, be prepared and see if we can do enough good things to somehow beat those guys.”

On starting the same offensive line two weeks in a row: “Actually, (Thomas) Coleman hurt his knee a little bit today. He was standing back there in the background, limping around, so we may have a new one now if he can’t go. Fran (Person) might get the call.”