Sept. 16, 2009

The University of South Carolina football squad continued its preparations for Saturday’s 7:05 p.m. contest against Florida Atlantic by working out at the Bluff Road practice fields on Wednesday afternoon.

“We’re ready to play our best,” said head coach Steve Spurrier following the practice session. “We’ll try to improve on a lot of areas from the last game and see if we can’t put on a good football performance here Saturday night.”

Danny Wuerffel was in Columbia on Wednesday and spoke to the team prior to practice. “It was wonderful to see a former player,” said the Head Ball Coach. “Certainly he was one of my all-time favorite players. He’s wonderful young man. He came out and said a few words to our team. Basically he just told them he watched them play on TV the last two games, we’ve got a good team if we can put it all together and play a little bit more mistake free, then we’ve got a chance to have an excellent year. He’s a guy who knows a lot about how to compete and certainly how to win. He was a tremendous leader for us.”

Coach Spurrier indicated that redshirt freshman tailback Kenny Miles and true freshman wide receiver Alshon Jeffery would see more action on Saturday. “We’re going to give some guys a chance who we think are as good as the other guys. We’re going to try to win the game with our best players. It will take our best players to beat Florida Atlantic. We think Alshon and Kenny deserve a chance to play.”

The Gamecocks will return to the practice fields on Thursday afternoon.