Oct. 29, 2014

The South Carolina Gamecocks (4-4, 2-4 SEC) practiced Wednesday afternoon at the Bluff Road “Proving Grounds.” The Gamecocks are preparing for Saturday’s SEC Eastern Division matchup with the Tennessee Volunteers (3-5, 0-4 SEC) at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia. The SEC Network will televise the 7:30 p.m. ET game nationally with Tom Hart and Matt Stinchcomb in the booth and Heather Mitts on the sidelines.

Wide receiver Pharoh Cooper has been impressive in his second year in the program. “I think he’s a pretty good player,” said wide receivers coach Steve Spurrier Jr. “I think he’s played about as well as you can. He’s got a lot ahead of him that he can do. He’s proven what he can do. He’s a really talented young man.”

The Gamecock offense clicked on most cylinders last Saturday in scoring 35 points at Auburn. “Hopefully it’s like that every week,” said Spurrier Jr. “Some weeks it doesn’t work that way. Hopefully we recognize that we’ve got good players and when we play well and execute well we can make a difference. We need to keep doing that. We know there’s a lot of things we can do better.”

“Hopefully we’ll be better,” added senior quarterback Dylan Thompson. “We missed some chances as everyone knows to put up more points. I feel like we should have scored probably 50 to be honest. I made some mistakes down there. I think we have the confidence that we can put up however many points as we need to.”

Despite the solid offensive performance overall at Auburn, the Gamecocks continued to struggle in the fourth quarter. “We have had some bad fourth quarters,” acknowledged Spurrier Jr. “We’ve got to find a way to repeat our second and third quarters with our fourth.”

The Gamecocks are slated to work out again on Thursday afternoon.