Sept. 11, 2007
Opening Statement
“We’re looking forward to our game Saturday night at 7 p.m. against South Carolina State. It’s the first time in history that the two schools will meet. You sort of think about why haven’t they played before, but for some reason it hasn’t happened until now. They’re celebrating their 100th year of playing football and we are at 114. It should be a heckuva game. They are picked to win their conference this year. They are just getting started. We’re just getting started into our year. They have a bunch of good athletes. They have a bunch of guys that can play for us, I know that. I’m sure they will be excited to play their very best and do everything to beat us.”
“We’re looking forward to the game too. We haven’t played extremely well yet. Hopefully we can. We’ve had mental errors and careless things happen. We’ve gotten away with it the first two weeks and were fortunate that the balls bounced our way for two weeks. We’re going to really try to see if we can play at a higher level and cut out the careless penalties that we had.”
On improving heading into the South Carolina State game
“We have a lot of room to improve. If we can do that, we have a chance to have a pretty good year because we were fortunate to win this one last week. We know (South Carolina State) wants to beat us badly. This is a chance to create a memory of a lifetime if they come in and beat us. They could beat us. Sometimes the way we play, we could lose to these guys. They are very capable. Coach Pough has done a great job down there, and they’ll be ready to play. It’s a game of emotion, but it’s our team against their team.”
On playing to the team’s ability
“We’re trying to improve one game to the next. There is so much room for improvement that we’re looking forward to coaching this week. We did some hard coaching yesterday, and until we get our guys playing at a level at which we’re capable then we are always going to do that. We haven’t played close to how we should play. It’s frustrating but we’ve still been winning. Playing the game the right way is the only thing you can coach.”
On defensive improvement
“We did on run defense. We made a lot of improvement there. We’ve played better overall, there’s no doubt about that, especially defensively. Offensively we were one for 11 on third downs, but we played a lot tougher defense than the first game. We need to play a lot better than that offensively. Defensively we had some missed assignments, but they didn’t cost us.”
On the state of the offense
We’ve run the ball fairly well. Looking back, we should’ve run on third and five or third and seven. We had trouble pass blocking those guys. Blake did a pretty good job of taking care of the ball. We have to get guys to get open and throw it to them. We weren’t open a whole bunch, but we didn’t have much time the other night anyway. Whether or not we can pass block South Carolina State, I don’t know. We’ll find out. We haven’t really pass blocked anybody yet. At times we have decent protection, but the Louisiana guys got a lot of pressure on the quarterback also. We’re a long way off from being a pretty good team, but I think we have the potential.
On South Carolina State’s offense
“They run an option and will give us the same kind of run action that Louisiana-Lafayette did. You have to do your assignments and tackle them all. Tackle the guys that are faking and tackle the quarterback. We missed a lot of guys against Louisiana, but we tackled a lot better last week.”
On scheduling the first game between the schools
“Two years ago we scheduled this game. When I got here, someone said, `Do you want to play South Carolina State?’ I said, `Sure, why not. They’re an in-state team.’ I did not realize it at the time that they haven’t played before. I didn’t realize it was that big of a deal. If I had been here 10 or 12 years ago, I would have definitely wanted to schedule the game. It’s a good game. Instead of bringing in teams like Louisiana-Lafayette, bring in South Carolina State or Wofford. If they beat us, they beat us. Coaches are always worried about somebody beating you. Everyone on the schedule can beat you.”
“It’s a good game. Buddy Pough said it’s wonderful for their program. Whatever we can do to help those guys out, I think we should do that.”
On defeating Georgia and contending for the SEC title
“It just shows that we’re capable. It doesn’t show that we’re a big powerhouse by any means. It’s neat, but unless we can follow up and improve as we go, it won’t mean a whole bunch. We’re a long way off from really having a good team, but I think the potential is here. It’s our job as coaches to get the right players on the field and teach them what to do.”
On possibility of overlooking this week
“We’re not good enough to be overconfident. Every win is precious to the South Carolina football team. We don’t take any wins for granted because none of them are for granted. We have to scratch, claw, make goal line stands and force field goals and all that kind of stuff so far to win a couple of games. We’ll be ready Saturday night. We’re not happy the way we played, and the coaches aren’t pleased the way their players performed either.”
