Sept. 28, 2010

The No. 20/22 South Carolina Gamecocks (3-1, 1-1 SEC) were back at the Bluff Road “Proving Grounds” Tuesday afternoon, practicing for the first time since their 35-27 setback at Auburn on Saturday.

“We had a decent practice today,” said head coach Steve Spurrier following the 90-minute workout. “We had a lot of errors in the game. That’s the reason we got beat really. We had a pretty good effort, but Auburn played well. We’ll regroup and see if we can’t get better some way, some how or another.”

Several Gamecocks were held out of practice on Tuesday nursing minor injuries. Among those limited were T.J. Johnson, Rokevious Watkins, Shaq Wilson, DeVonte Holloman and Josh Dickerson.

Coach Spurrier indicated that Stephen Garcia would be the starting quarterback for the Alabama game. “We plan on him starting against Alabama. He actually played three quarters pretty well and then obviously the two fumbles were really bad plays. Now, can he stop fumbling? We’re going to give him a chance to stop fumbling. He hasn’t thrown a lot of picks this year. Other than the fumbles, he’s played pretty decently.”

Coach Spurrier was asked about the struggles on the offensive line. “I don’t have an answer, you need to ask (offensive line) Coach (Shawn) Elliott that. Maybe we just can’t block guys well enough to allow our quarterbacks to stand back there a long time. We’re stuck with what we got. When losing begins to hurt these guys as much as it hurts some of us, we’ll have a good team here at South Carolina. But I’m not convinced losing hurts these guys much, or else they’d play better. They would really play their assignments and play better. They’re either not smart enough to play or losing doesn’t hurt – one or the other, because they’re big, strong guys. Our line looks pretty good running out there. They look pretty good and then the ball is snapped and sometimes we just don’t compete hard enough. But they’re our guys and we’re going to try to get them to play better.”

The Gamecocks are slated to practice again on Wednesday and Thursday at approximately 4 p.m. before taking the weekend off.