Aug. 7, 2009

The University of South Carolina football squad worked out for about two hours in near perfect weather conditions at the Bluff Road practice fields on Friday. For the second straight night, the Gamecocks wore their helmets and shoulder pads for the evening workout, their fourth practice of the fall camp.

“We had good weather tonight – it wasn’t extremely hot and we had a little breeze so our players were not exhausted tonight,” said head coach Steve Spurrier following the workout. “We’ll put full pads on (Saturday) night and maybe let the young guys scrimmage a little bit out here. It will be open to the public tomorrow, then after that we’ll probably have to close up next week. We’ll be open tomorrow night if our fans want to come out and watch it.” Saturday night’s practice is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the Proving Grounds.

The offense did not look particularly sharp tonight, with redshirt freshman Aramis Hillary being the most impressive quarterback. “Aramis completed a few,” noted Coach Spurrier. “The offense didn’t complete many, but Aramis hit a few here and there. The running backs are looking fine,” continued the Head Ball Coach, “but we had a few fumbles though. Jarvis (Giles) lost one or two, so we have to get that corrected. But the running backs are running hard and quick and trying to hit the holes.”

Starting signal-caller Stephen Garcia did not have his best performance of the fall on Friday. “Stephen is not throwing real beautifully, if that’s what you mean,” said Coach Spurrier. “He’s not throwing as accurately as he needs to and we hope he can. We’ll keep working on it. He needs to throw the ball a lot better than he’s thrown the last couple of days or we really be a running team. But we’re going to run the ball anyway. Hopefully we’ll be able to throw it a bit. We think he can make all the throws, but we’ve struggled throwing the ball thus far.”