Oct. 31, 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 meeting vs. Arkansas. Kickoff is set for 7:45 pm
Opening comment:
“The Razorbacks have won all of their close games and are a good team. They are 7-1 and Top 15 in the country. Some of the Arkansas people think they ought to be in the Top 10 and they may have reason to think that since they beat Auburn, which is a Top 10 team. They lead the conference in rushing. McFadden and Jones are two of the best backs in the conference, on the same team, and they run both of them a lot. We need to anchor down and not let them run up and down the field. We did a fairly good job last year of keeping them out of the end zone, although I think McFadden rushed for 184, because I know that was our total offense and we matched him.”
“We need to play well and take care of the ball a lot better then we did the last game and make fewer mistakes. That will give us a better chance.”
About goals for the season:
“We are back to trying to just win a ball game. We realize that we are realistically out of the division in the SEC. Sometimes in the back of your mind, if it were to happen that you started to win some games, you start believing you have a chance. Now we know that is gone, we just want to win some games, play well, have fun and play football.”
About beating ranked teams:
“The other teams are not fumbling to us and throwing interceptions and not getting touchdowns called back like they did last year. They are not dropping passes and they are playing better then they did last year. Also, we are having errors here and there as you can tell, that maybe we didn’t quite have last year. Although, last year we had a lot of bad plays too but we still overcame them.”
“That is football. The ball is not always going to bounce your way. You have to make your breaks sometimes and the good teams have the ability to do that. We are capable of beating a ranked team, but until we do it, that is all we are is capable.”
On communicating plays during game:
“There is a problem trying to signal in to Syvelle (Newton) who has only been playing quarterback for about five to six weeks. We need to do a better job of communicating there. We (the coaches) are working on that.”
“The games we have lost, three home games against three pretty good opponents, we haven’t played particularly efficient. We have botched scoring chances. I would call the second play of the game the other night a fumble instead of an interception because Syvelle hit Mike West right in the chest. Mike had it a moment, then got hit and it popped out. That was a careless play that went seven for them. Unfortunately, we couldn’t overcome that. In field position, we lost about 144 yards in the kicking exchange. We started on the 18 and they started on the 36 and that is hard to overcome things like that.”
Changes on Special Teams
“We will have some changes on punt team and kickoff team. On that last kickoff, we had three guys trying to pick it up and we managed to get it back to the five. It was sad watching that, it looked like a bunch of Pop Warner guys trying to pick up that ball. Hopefully that won’t happen again.”
On Syvelle’s headache:
“Syvelle got hit pretty hard in the head at the end of the first half. At half time he had a headache, but he was ok, he knew what the plays were. He is scheduled to practice today. We held him out last night. We think he will be fine.”
On Chris White:
“Chris was in the same situation. He was held out last night too, but I think he will be back today. He needs to practice today. He doesn’t practice on Wednesday’s because that is his day off. He has class on Wednesday’s and is excused every week for that.”
On the rest of the season:
“We are only two-thirds through the season and we still have four big games left. We will see how we finish. We are very healthy and should play well.”
