Nov. 15, 2005

Columbia, S.C. – South Carolina head football coach Steve Spurrier met with the media on Tuesday afternoon as the Gamecocks continue to prepare for Saturday night’s game vs. Clemson.

(Opening statement)
“I think our team is looking forward to the game this week. It’s the 11th game of the season. We are a very healthy team. We’ve been very fortunate in the injury situation the entire year. I think we have just about every lineman that has started ready to go. We got out of the game last week with just Kenny McKinley sort of getting bumped in the hip, a hip pointer but he should be fine by this weekend. Hopefully, we will play our best game of the year. That’s what we are trying to do. We try to improve as the season goes and we have been telling the guys that hopefully we play our best game in the last game of the season, which is this one. Then we got a bowl game but that’s about a month or so away. So we’ll regroup and worry about that one after this one. Clemson is a very good team that has lost some closed ones. They clobbered FSU last week. I see them sort of similar to Georgia and Auburn, athlete-wise. They are a very fast team; a well-coached team and we need to really play well. Hopefully, the good breaks and the good bounces will continue. It’s going to be one of the best teams we play this year, no question about it.”

(On the win vs. Florida)
“It just worked out. We didn’t play very well. We didn’t throw the ball well. Defensively, we hung in there. We held them to 22 points or so but we had a lot of plays where we could be better. Our goal this week is to try to play our assignments a lot better than we played last week. Again, it really wasn’t a very good game but it worked out for us.”

(On team’s performance in the red zone)
“We’ve been pretty fortunate and certainly that has been a big key to not to have gone down there and attempt field goals (that could be blocked). I think we’ve only attempted 10 field goals this year. Some teams have tried 20 or so in the conference. Josh (Brown) made one good one at Tennessee and the one last week was crucial, to get us a 11-point lead their in the fourth quarter. We’ve been fortunate to usually score touchdowns their and that’s a big reason we’ve won these close games. I don’t have the answer for it but we do obviously try for touchdowns; we don’t try to run three and kick a field goal. Although, I guess some times we have although we shouldn’t have.”

(On Clemson’s defense)
“Clemson’s defense is a little different than what we have been seeing. We’ve been seeing a lot of bump and run, man-to-man teams. They don’t do that a whole bunch. They are a combination of zones and so forth. They disguise very well and they have a bunch of coverages. Hopefully, we can sort of see where to throw it most the time and Blake has got to make some good decisions when we throw this week. He needs to have a good game to give us a chance. Somehow or another last week wasn’t his best game but it still worked out for us because we were able to run more than we threw. But he’s going to probably need to play well this week to give us a chance.”

(On Clemson quarterback Charlie Whitehurst)
“You know I haven’t seen a whole bunch of him but obviously anybody that has been a four-year starter at one school, is, shoot, that’s unbelievable nowadays. He, maybe, is the most experienced quarterback in the country. He played a super game last week, had one of his best so he seems to be peaking at the end of his career here. That’s certainly admirable to be a four-year starter in college football.”

(On Clemson team overall)
“I heard they threw down the field a little bit more. I haven’t really studied their offense. I have enough problems trying to study the defense since I’m the offensive coach here. I haven’t watched their offense that much but I did read that they threw down the field some more. They have the receivers. I watched the highlights of (Chansi) Stuckey and he’s a big-time wide receiver. He can catch it and go the distance anytime. Our defense has got a good challenge this week as we do most weeks.”

(On playing Clemson)
“Well we hope to beat Clemson. That’s one of our goals and it will be one of our goals every year. They have beaten South Carolina a lot more than we have beaten them. Once the SEC season is over we play our in-state rival, Clemson, and hopefully we can represent our school well on Saturday. It hasn’t always happened. I think our guys have put that game from last week behind us, and the ones before behind us and we are trying to play better. We really have not played at a level of effort and smarts together as well as we think we are capable. We are probably going to need to do that to have a chance this week. It should be a heck of a game. Hopefully we can compete with those guys.

(On statistics)
“You look at all the statistics, which some people like to look at, fortunately this year we are not into statistics. I used to be, not this year. There is an old saying `Statistics are for losers and assistant coaches.’ I’m sort of like an assistant coach since I coach quarterbacks and call plays and run the offense, so I have always sort of felt in touch with the assistant coaches. This year I’m not into statistics, just wins and losses, that’s the only thing that counts.”

(On the close games)
“Sometimes you get into streaks of good fortune coming your way. Certainly, I think it’s really been that way for us. I think what we have done well is not given the ball away and not done some stupid things that occasionally happens to some teams. That’s been important for us. I really don’t have a reason why we have been so fortunate. I hope I’m smart enough to know that it’s not any brilliant coaching that we’re doing; it’s just worked out at the right time. Our players have made the plays at the end of games to give us a chance to be the winner. Sometimes the other guy has 12 on the field and he doesn’t know that and we are fortunate. It could be a combination of the other guy messing up a little bit and us not messing up. The other guy has fumbled through the end zone and things like that we’ve been the recipient of a lot of good fortune the last five weeks.”

(On last year’s South Carolina-Clemson game)
“Hopefully we are beyond all of that. Hopefully that is a memory of way back. We are not into any of that. I think we are going to shake hands with their team before the game, I know I’m going to shake hands with their coaches. We, absolutely, in my opinion, have no ill will toward any of their coaches or any of their players. It was just a bad, ugly scene that will hopefully never happen again in our state.”

(On both teams coming off wins last week)
“It adds to which team can regroup after some big, emotional victories. We certainly think we can because we didn’t play extremely well on offense or defense and we think we can play better this week. We have to wait and see. I read where they look forward to this game every year and certainly we should look forward to it also. We (both teams) had two big conference games (last week) so the emotional level should be pretty even. I like every week. I think this one is a little bigger for the fans. As coaches, we do about the same thing every week.”

(On team’s goals)
“They’re all still out there. One of them was to beat Clemson and one was to win eight games. So if our guys are to achieve all their goals, they are still out there for this team. We set about seven or eight. We’ve not finished what the goals this team set.”

(On team’s effort since the Alabama game)
“We’ve improved a lot. There is no question about that. Our tackling is much better than it was back then, and effort and intensity. I still think it can be better. We are still not anywhere close to where we hope to be some day. I’m sure the teams we beat can probably say the same thing that their effort and intensity is not near what they hope to be. It’s always as one writer said `We are a work in progress.’ We are still a work in progress. We’ve been extremely fortunate, had some good bounces and breaks, and this that and the other. Again, hopefully we can play our best this Saturday night.

(On his first South Carolina-Clemson game)
“This is my first game of course. It’s one of the big games on the schedule, when you look at all of them. We know it’s there. In the end we have got to play our best.”

(On shaking hands before the game with Clemson)
“I think after the ugly incident last year, it’s very important. Hopefully our fans will treat the Clemson fans with respect and realize that we have two outstanding universities in our state and we should be able to compete in a healthy rivalry and go from there. It was sort of interesting, when I first got here, I was speaking somewhere and a South Carolina fan said that the reason Clemson has beaten us so much is we don’t hate them enough. I said, `Is that the key??’ I just said, `Well if that is the case than when I was at Florida we would have never beaten Georgia after about the first two or three years because they really hated us.’ Hate doesn’t work. It’s how you play the game. It’s how you play the game, coach and prepare and getting ready to play the game of football. You want to beat everybody you play but you need to play the game the way it is meant to be played. Hopefully our fans will do what they did last week, yell when they have the ball, quiet when we have the ball. When we go to Clemson they will be loud when have it and quiet when they have it. That’s the way it is. I’m glad the game is here in Columbia. Our fans have been a big asset (for us). We have it tough on the opponent and good for us. We are 5-1 here and I tell you it’s been nice to have seven home games.”

(On South Carolina offense this week)
“We have to use all of our receivers. We have to use them a bit better than we did last week. We have to run the ball. We are not good enough to go back there and throw 35, 40 times. We are a mix it up team. There is no question that is what we have to do to give us a chance to win.”