Nov. 7, 2010

Recap | Final Stats | Notes | AP Photo Gallery

South Carolina Head Coach Steve Spurrier

Opening statement
We had a bad night. We had a terrible night. I apologize to the fans that we weren’t even competitive tonight. The way we played, you wonder how we won six games this year but for some reason we didn’t have much tonight. I thought in the first half we had some scoring chances offensively that I thought could get us into the game. At the end (of the first half) there we had an offensive interference that cost us four (points).

They thoroughly out-played us, out-coached us, out-everything. They certainly deserved to win the game. We are where we are. We have three losses in the conference, Florida has three losses and we are going to play them next week for the Eastern Division championship.

On playing without Marcus Lattimore in parts of the game
He was there early and we seemed to not have any running room. If Marcus is not in the game, we still can play. Other guys have to go play. Alshon (Jeffrey) had another excellent game, caught a bunch of passes. I guess he pushed off a little bit there (at the end of the first half).

On the fake punt
Fourth-and-five at midfield, we thought it looked pretty good and it did look pretty good, but one guy backed out and we didn’t block him. At the time, I thought it was the right call and I would do it again. We were struggling stopping them and trying to get a possession there, we didn’t make it.

On the team
We just need to regroup now. We need to realize that we were pretty sad tonight and we can’t get it back. Regroup, and give the Gators a game next week.

South Carolina Players

Junior Quarterback Stephen Garcia

On Marcus Lattimore’s effect on the offense
He’s a great player. Everybody knows that, but he’s just one player. We have to play better offensively. We moved the ball pretty well in the first half. We just had stupid stuff happen. We missed the field goal. We had an offensive pass interference. We had a lot of missed opportunities that we just can’t have happen.

On if the play of Arkansas was surprising
It caught us off guard. Everybody knows that it didn’t mean a whole lot in terms of the Eastern Division, but we wanted to go out and get some momentum going into Florida. Maybe it was a good thing this happened. Maybe we’ll learn from this, practice harder, and be ready to go into Florida to play for the Eastern Division championship.

On avoiding a late season collapse
We have to have a lot better week of practice. I don’t think anybody was looking ahead to the Florida game, but I think that was on everybody’s mind. We don’t need to make any excuses. This was a bad game. We have to play a lot better next week.

Arkansas Players

Tramain Thomas

On his defensive performance
It was really important for us to get a lid on them and make them one-dimensional. We made them one-dimensional tonight and it came out to our advantage. As a whole, our defense just played our hearts out. Our defensive line was giving them trouble out there. We were giving them trouble trying to disguise it. We played well as a defense tonight.

DeMarcus Love

We were really focused. We knew we had to come and get this win in order to be in the position we want to be in at the end of the season. We came into a hostile environment. But, the team stuck together.”

We jumped on them fast and I guess, around the third quarter, the fans started leaving. We ended up finishing the game on top. It just felt good. You don’t want to think that the game is over but you get the sense that they lost confidence and their team knows that as long as we’re here we’re not going to let up.

You can sense it anytime when you take it out of them. You can see it in their body language and by the way they play. You know you’re on their heals and that’s a really good feeling.

DJ Williams

On missing WR Greg Childs
This team is a family. This win was for him. He’s a great player. We hope he gets better. Tonight we had players step up. We picked up the slack. That’s the great thing about our offense: depth. We talked about that in Fall Camp and it showed today. When one person goes down we have players that are ready to step up and make plays.

That was huge to see people file out of the stadium. Not so much as an embarrassing factor for the other team but so much for our offense and being able to get play calls and hearing the checks. That’s something we focused on doing, wanted to do, and it helped us later in the game.

Ryan Mallet

We ran the ball extremely well. To be successful at home and on the road you have to be able to run the ball and I think we did a great job of that.

We have a bunch of guys that are going to step in and make plays for us. We missed (Greg Childs), we called him after the game and talked to him. But you saw how Cobi (Hamilton), DJ (Williams), and (Jarius) Wright stepped up and that’s how you become a great football team.

We put it all together tonight and we have to keep doing that. If we were doing that all season then we wouldn’t be in the position we’re in. But we’re progressing every game still. It’s like last year when we got on a roll towards the end of the season. But we need to finish better. We need to get better each week.