Aug. 27, 2009

The University of South Carolina football team worked out for two hours Thursday afternoon at the Bluff Road practice fields. The team continued its preparations for the September 3 season opener at NC State, now just one week away.

Head coach Steve Spurrier noted that freshman wide receiver DeMario Bennett is listed as doubtful for the opener with a shoulder injury. Wide receiver Dion Lecorn will not play in the opener, as he continues to recover from a broken leg, suffered on the final play of the spring game.

“I feel we’ve got to coach real hard for a week to get some guys ready to play,” said Coach Spurrier following the workout. “We’re an unknown team. We’ve got a quarterback that hasn’t proven he can play yet – he’s got to go do that, an offensive line that has struggled, a bunch of new running backs, so we’re an unknown team. We’ve got to do some serious coaching between now and the ballgame to hopefully give our guys a chance to win the game.”

Coach Spurrier did not seem overly concerned about going into a hostile environment, but acknowledged the Wolfpack crowd would be ready. “They’ve got good fans. They’ve got excellent football fans. They love their team like all state universities. It will be loud, we know that. We don’t have a lot of fancy signals or snap counts, so we should be ok as far as that goes. Blocking and tackling is what we need to concern ourselves with, and throwing and catching, things like that.”

The Gamecocks will enjoy their final off day on Friday before returning to the practice fields on Saturday night. Here is the schedule leading up to the NC State game:

Friday, August 28: No practice scheduled

Saturday, August 29: 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, August 30: 7:30 p.m.

Monday, August 31: 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, September 1: 4:15 p.m.; Coach Spurrier press conference at noon; No media availability after practice.