Oct. 23, 2006

The University of South Carolina football squad (5-2, 3-2 SEC) began its preparations for Saturday night’s tilt with eighth-ranked Tennessee (6-1, 2-1 SEC) by working out at the Bluff Road practice fields on Monday night. Following the practice session, head coach Steve Spurrier met with the media:

On Casper Brinkley being named the SEC defensive lineman of the week: “He did have an excellent game and it’s nice to see him recognized.”

On GameDay coming to Columbia: “That will be good. It’s always good to get national attention here in Columbia. Hopefully our team is ready to play our best home game of the year or our best game of the year. Certainly if we do that we think we have a chance. If we play with a lot of turnovers and errors and squander opportunities then we won’t have much of a chance. We’re going to try to play our best and see what happens.”

On if he enjoys playing Tennessee: “I like playing in big games. If you keep winning, the games get bigger. If you lose, they’re not very big. We’re still one game at a time and see what happens. It’s a huge game for us and for Tennessee.”

On the remaining schedule which features four highly-ranked opponents: “If we’ve got the toughest (schedule remaining), then we must have had the easiest earlier, so it all works out. The five victories we realize have not been against anybody with a winning record. We haven’t beaten a top team. We’ve got Tennessee this week. I believe every game stands on its own merit. It’s nice to have three of the last five at home. We hopefully can give our fans something to yell and scream about. I know that they’re ready for something good to happen and we’ll try our best to see if we can make it happen Saturday night.”

The Gamecocks will return to the practice fields on Tuesday afternoon.