Sept. 19, 2012

The University of South Carolina football team worked out Wednesday afternoon at the Bluff Road “Proving Grounds.” The seventh-ranked Gamecocks (3-0, 1-0 SEC) are preparing for Saturday’s SEC Eastern Division showdown with the Missouri Tigers (2-1, 0-1 SEC). Game time is set for 3:30 p.m. and the game will be televised nationally on CBS.

After Wednesday’s practice, offensive line coach Shawn Elliott made it clear he was not happy with his unit’s performance in last Saturday’s win over UAB. Although he was not yet ready to declare a starting five for Saturday’s contest, he confirmed there would be some changes. “I can tell you about the changes we’re going to make,” said Elliott. “Hopefully we’re going to go out there and block somebody’s tail off Saturday night instead of laying around on the football field like we did last week. That’s about the gist of the changes I can tell you.

“Right now I haven’t decided (on who is going to start Saturday),” said Elliott. “I’m going to go in here and watch this tape and see who’s putting forth the effort. There are some battles going on. I would anticipate some changes. I’m just not real sure at this point if I want to bring that out in the open.

“I don’t think it had anything to do with effort,” continued Coach Elliott. “I think it was just some mental busts. It was something you didn’t think you would have. We didn’t have it in the first two ballgames, then you come out the other night and we had them. I was really disappointed in it. All in all, I thought it was a pitiful effort. It was an embarrassment as a coach, an embarrassment to our players and I can tell you one thing, if change isn’t made, it probably needs to be made with me because that was a horrible performance.

“We’ve worked our butt off (this week),” added Elliott in how he addressed the problems this week. “We focused on doing things the correct way and we tried to get some motivation and some excitement in these guys. We didn’t have to go out and do wholesale changes as far as preparation. I just think the importance needed to be brought out to them a little bit.

“We won’t know for sure until Saturday evening sometime around 7:30 or 8 o’clock how we did, but I anticipate us coming out there and playing a little bit better ballgame.”

The Gamecocks will return the practice fields on Thursday afternoon.