Oct. 24, 2006

Columbia, S.C. – South Carolina head football coach Steve Spurrier met with the media on Tuesday afternoon as the Gamecocks continue to prepare for this Saturday’s contest vs. Tennessee. Kickoff is set for 7:45 pm with the game televised on ESPN.

Opening Statement
“We got Tennessee week and they come to our place. Hopefully we will play a good game this Saturday night. It seems like at home we have not played efficiently and maximized our scoring chances, all those kinds of things, at least against the two big teams, Georgia and Auburn. Certainly Tennessee is right there with them and we will try to play without a lot of mistakes and turnovers. If we can score when we are down in there, maybe that will put us in position to have a chance against Tennessee. They are still in the hunt for the SEC and we are still in it too, as far as that goes. It should be an interesting game, a big game, looking forward to seeing what happens. We are very healthy at this time of year. A friend of mine was asking about that, and I said, yeah, our teams stay generally healthy. We are probably as healthy as anybody in the country going into the last five games. Hopefully that will help us as we start this run.”

On Tennessee defensive coordinator John Chavis
“He’s changed a little bit just keeping up with the times, which all coaches have to do. Those coaches that coach the same way year after year after year will get left behind. We all try to keep up with what is new and offensively we are trying to find some plays against those zone blitzes. That’s a new thing in the last eight, nine years. He does an excellent job. Their defense was very good last year. I think they were number one in the conference in run defense, two or third overall. He’s got good athletes and well-coached; they disguise and give you some problems.”

On Tennessee offense
“I haven’t really watched them a whole bunch on offense but I would imagine that David Cutcliffe has really helped their offense. That’s what all my Tennessee buddies tell me. Ainge, their quarterback, they settled on him, he gets about 80 percent of their snaps in practice, so he is much better prepared to play. They have always had good players; I think their offensive line lost a little weight from last year to this year, are more mobile and seem to be playing a lot better. They haven’t run the ball extremely well, like most Tennessee teams do. I guess they haven’t had to and they lead the conference in passing. They are the top offense in the league right now.

On having a quarterback who runs well
“I always wanted to have one that could run out of there occasionally. We run Syvelle (Newton) a little more than occasionally because that is what he does best. He is an outstanding runner with the ball. Obviously we have to use him that way. It just seems like in the past most of our quarterbacks were not good runners, although Danny Wuerffel could run out of there a little bit and make seven to eight yards. I have always said it is very helpful if you have a quarterback who could run. He doesn’t have to run a whole lot but if he could come out of there with some third downs and make first downs, keep the chains moving, keep the offense on the field, that has really helped us. Somebody told me that we have only punted eight times in the last five games, that is because of Syvelle. Our third downs are like 50 percent since he has been in here. We are calling the same plays; we didn’t all of a sudden find a bunch that worked. The other day on that third and 13 against Vandy he came out of the pocket and ran for 10-15 yards and I was telling David Reaves, I said to him, `That play right there makes me a lot smarter than him getting sacked.’ Coaches are a lot smarter when players make plays individually. Syvelle has the talent to do that. He is going to really need to play well if we are going to have a chance this week. He knows that, I think our receivers know it. Our receivers did not have a good game last week as far as having three holding penalties. Three different guys had holding penalties in there. They grabbed cloth and at the time it didn’t look like it but when you watch the tape, they grabbed cloth and stuck on the guy. We had a touchdown called back, a fourth and one that we made called back, and a first down called back. The receivers have to play better this week and play without those errors. They caught the ball well. Sidney (Rice) had a good game, we didn’t throw to him much, but we have to play without the errors we have had recently.”

On Cory Boyd and Mike Davis
“He’s a good back and Mike Davis came in and had a beautiful run down the sideline. On that play, Freddie Brown made an excellent block to spring him free around the side. He dove into the end zone. Cory is just a good back. He runs hard, he’s a tough kid and he loves to play. He’s getting some decent holes up there. The line blocked a lot of those plays very well the other day. He’s got some speed; too bad his touchdown run was called back by a receiver holding. It didn’t cost us the game, sometimes as a coach, the bad things happen, you hope it doesn’t cost you the victory and you try to learn from it.

“Cory is a back that can catch the ball, block, and run, he can do it all. He has good size, speed, hands; he’s a talented player back there. Again, we are looking into playing Mike a little bit more also. The old thinking was you let a back run 35 times but maybe the new thinking is you run two of them, keep them fresh and don’t get them beat up. They all want to run it themselves all the time but I think there is a lot of merit in two running backs playing during the course of a game. We did that at Florida. Everybody wondered why Fred Taylor didn’t gain 1,000 all the time, I said well we got Eli Williams, Terry Jackson and one is a little bit better catching the ball, this that and the other. We just played them all, they were all fresh and stayed very healthy throughout the year.”

Comparing this stretch of games to last year’s stretch
“The teams have got much better records this year, Tennessee, Arkansas and Florida. Who knows what is going to happen? I really believe we have a better team than last year. Now, what needs to happen, the other guy doesn’t need to play well. When we beat Tennessee last year, they really didn’t play. It sort of was interesting, the Vanderbilt quarterback said that they really didn’t have their “A” game. That is like Tiger Woods impression, he shoots 69 and he doesn’t have his “A” game. We have to hope that these good teams don’t play exceptionally well, and they didn’t last year. Arkansas didn’t, Tennessee didn’t, and Florida didn’t. That helped us. Our guys played without mistakes, without error. We scored about every time we had a chance in those three games. You never know if it is going to happen that way but if it did then certainly we would have a chance.”