Sept. 3, 2007

The South Carolina Gamecock football team returned to the practice fields on Monday afternoon. It was the squad’s first workout since posting a 28-14 season-opening win over Louisiana-Lafayette on Saturday night. The Gamecocks are preparing for next Saturday’s SEC opener at Georgia. Kickoff is set for 5:45 p.m. and the game will be televised nationally by ESPN2.

Five players were at practice but did not participate in the drills on Monday, including quarterback Chris Smelley (sore right shoulder), tailback Bobby Wallace (fractured right clavicle), linebacker Yvan Banag (right knee sprain), linebacker Cody Wells (right leg strain) and safety Emanuel Cook (appendectomy).

“We’ve got several (lineup) changes we’ll announce later in the week,” Head Coach Steve Spurrier said following the workout. “We had a lot of guys out there that didn’t play with the effort that’s necessary for us to ever be a contender. I guess you could call us pretenders right now. The way we played the other night was embarrassing at times. I apologize to our fans again. I’ve apologized every year I’ve been here, I might as well apologize again. We’ll keep trying though. We’ll keep coaching as hard as we can. We need to coach better, that’s for sure.

Coach Spurrier said that fifth-year senior quarterback Blake Mitchell could be the starter again on Saturday at Georgia. “There’s a good chance he’ll be the starter on Saturday. I haven’t decided for sure yet. We’ll keep it sort of suspenseful until later in the week.”