Oct. 9, 2006

The University of South Carolina football squad (4-2, 2-2 SEC) returned to the practice fields Monday afternoon. It was their first workout since posting a 24-17 win at Kentucky last Saturday night. The Gamecocks will practice each day through Thursday, before taking the rest of the weekend off, as they enjoy a bye week. Carolina’s next game is set for Saturday, Oct. 21 when they travel to Nashville to face the Vanderbilt Commodores in a 3 p.m. ET (2 p.m. CT) contest.

Following Monday’s practice, Head Coach Steve Spurrier met with the media:

“We just had a little practice day today and will have a bigger one Tuesday and Wednesday and go from there. We may scrimmage a little bit Tuesday or Wednesday and let some of the young guys play a little bit and see who wants to play. We’re still trying out guys. We’ve got some that haven’t played much yet, so we’re still in the try-out business down here. We don’t know who are best players are yet.”

“We need to make some more changes. Our effort and assignment was not very good the last game. We were very fortunate to beat Kentucky as it turned out. We had some players play well, but overall we were pretty fortunate to win the game.”

“I refuse to believe (that this is the kind of team we are), because I’ve seen us play well, but for some reason we’re having trouble getting the guys to really play their assignment and play with great effort. We’ll keep trying. I don’t think we need to settle for just being a mediocre bunch.”

On playing Sidney Rice in the prevent defense or Stanley Doughty on offense in short-yardage situations: “We’ve got to use the best players we can to try to win the game. It’s as simple as that. Guys can’t worry about getting their feelings hurt. This isn’t Pop Warner football where everybody gets to play. You play your best players to try to win the game.”