Oct. 11, 2011

Head Coach Steve Spurrier met with the media Tuesday afternoon to preview Saturday’s SEC road game at Mississippi State. The Gamecocks and Bulldogs will kick off at 12:21 p.m. on the SEC Network.

South Carolina Head Coach Steve Spurrier
Opening Statement
Mississippi State is 3-3. They talked about trying to win the (SEC) West this year. They talked about going to Atlanta to play for the SEC Championship. Now they’re talking about getting to a January bowl game. They still think they have a good team. They just haven’t played well yet. They’re going to be tough and ready to play. We should be ready to play too. We know what’s on the line. Georgia has a schedule they’ll win most their last games if not all of them. If we want to win the East division we have to keep winning.

On Kyle Nunn
His back was a little better but the trainer said he’s out this week. He had lower back problems that just came on. The trainer says he’s not out for the year, so there’s a chance he could be back.

On Dalton Wilson
Dalton sprained his foot a bit. I think he should be OK by the weekend.

On if Rokevious Watkins will be able to play
We hope so. He got a slight concussion. He won’t practice today but by Saturday hopefully he should be ready to go.

On Marty Markett
Market, he’s held out of practice today. That was an ugly hit. He got pushed in the back and the other guy hit him forward. He sort of got whiplash. He’s our best special teams guy. He’s always the first one down there. We need everyone to play on his level. I think he was a captain again; he was captain for three games.

On Byron Jerideau moving to the offensive line
He’s going to stay there a while. He only played about 10 plays on defense (this year). He’s too good an athlete to not play. We probably should have had him over there the whole year to tell the truth. We need to get Marcus (Lattimore) some holes to run. I think he had one good hole all day last week. Hopefully the blocking will be better.

AJ Cann can play at tackle. Byron will probably be a guard.

On the offensive line
After watching the tape you have to realize we only had 33 points when the second o-line went in and (all) the second guys went in. (The second team) scored 21 at the end of the game, so it’s misleading to think we romped the game. We still had to punt a few times. We still had some bad plays. We have a lot to work on.

On Connor Shaw’s being comfortable making checks at the line
He made a few checks here and there. Not many though. We had him ready to make a few. He’s capable of checking. He’s been here a while. He’s been here a year and a half, so he’s ready to play.

On playing on the road
We don’t talk about road games. Every games a game. You just try to play the best you can. I don’t think crowd noise will affect us too much. You just pick your foot up and you go. It might help us. I don’t think the linemen will flinch. We’ve had too many false starts.

On what the coaches tell Connor Shaw on improvement
Just being quick with the ball and getting the ball out. Take your steps and let it go. That’s what we harp on. Take you steps and let it go if you can. If you can’t you get it down to the short guy, which he did the first play last week.

On Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen
I know him a little bit just from him coaching at Florida and seeing a little bit in offseasons and so forth. The first year or so we sat next to each other at (SEC) meetings. It’s just like all you guys when you come to a meeting, you all sit in the same spots. At SEC coaches meetings, he’s usually sitting to my left.

On Marcus Lattimore
I’m thinking the holes aren’t there. They just aren’t there. We’ve not blocked very well the last several games. He had a couple of good runs the other day.

On the spread formation used last week
We want tot throw it around and get the ball in the air. We did that. We didn’t hit a lot of them but we hit a few of them. We put that little spread formation in and we thought we might run it once or twice. Heck we ran it 15 plays. We kept making seven or eight yards. I’m sure Mississippi STate will have a defense for that. They may put it in. it’s just a spread out formation that usually most teams try to defend it similarly. They may have another plan. They may blitz it or so forth.

On Bruce Ellington in the wildcat formation
A couple of weeks he’s been taking the direct snap. He’s pretty good at it if we can block for it. That one sweep we had, we got shoved back over there. That was in the third quarter.

(Bruce) was going to run several like that although I don’t think he went very far on any of them. Bruce got loose around the end. Some of those guys took a bad angle at him. We need to block better. We need to get Marcus (Lattimore) some better holes in there. That wildcat stuff everyone’s doing it. It gives you one less guy to block theoretically.

On the offensive line
We’re doing ok. We just cannot knock people backwards. Kentucky had some big guys. Everyone has big guys. We’re not knocking people backwards. We have been able to run for some yards. We haven’t been completely stymied. They’re doing pretty well. Our line is doing pretty well.

On getting plays called quicker
We did get them in a little quicker. We practiced quicker and got them in quicker. We’ll try to continue that. We have two signalers now. Two guys signal. One guy’s live part of the time and the other guy is live part of the time. We feel like we can rapid fire them in like that. We were definitely up there with 15 or 20 seconds when we snapped it a lot of times or more. You get 40 seconds after the play is down. I wasn’t looking at the clock, but we were moving faster. But we got so many plays because the def got the ball back for us. That was the reason.

On Jadeveon Clowney
He hasn’t quite showed up like he did early. He’s doing OK. He’s in there stopping the run and stalemates the tackles. He’s playing well but he hasn’t quite shown up like he did the other games.

On reaching 50 wins as head coach of South Carolina
I hope to. Who knows what can happen though. Connor (Shaw) hopefully can continue progressing a little bit. We’ll see where that can take us and so forth.

On Connor Shaw
He’s a smart young man. His dad’s a high school coach. His brother is quarterback at Georgia Southern. He’s all football and school. I thin he has around a 3.0 (gpa) as a business major. He’s a good student. You’re not going to hear about him downtown in the bars I don’t think.