Aug. 13, 2009

The University of South Carolina football squad worked out twice on Thursday, going in helmets and shoulder pads in a steady rain for two hours in the morning, then for another two hours in full pads during the evening hours.

“Just a normal practice – nothing too exciting happened,” said head coach Steve Spurrier following the evening drills. “We’re getting a lot of snaps in. We practiced in the rain this morning. In case we have a rainy day, our guys actually handled the ball fairly well.

“We’ll try to scrimmage a lot on Saturday and see if we’ve made any progress,” continued Coach Spurrier. “We’ve still got too many mistakes – linemen going the wrong way, can’t block the right guy, things like that. It’s sort of sad right now. We’ll see if we’ve made some progress come Saturday. We’ll probably give (sophomore quarterback) Zac Brindise a little more work. He threw some nice balls out here tonight. We’ll see if he can compete in there.

“We’re underdogs against NC State,” noted Coach Spurrier. “Our team knows that too. Nobody thinks we’re worth a crap. So they know that – I’ve told them (that) and we’ll keep telling them (that) until they earn any respect around this country. We’re a rag-tag bunch right now. Hopefully we can prove to be better than that.”

University President Dr. Harris Pastides watched some of Thursday night’s workout. “He’s going to come over tomorrow and say a few words to the guys in the meeting room,” said Coach Spurrier.

The Gamecocks will return to the practice fields on Friday night at 7:30. That practice is closed to the public.