Comments From The Ol' Ball Coach

Here's a bit of what Steve Spurrier is saying as South Carolina preps for this week's game...

On Georgia as an opponent...
“I think Georgia, certainly, personnel-wise is better than NC State. NC State has some good defensive linemen that can play with just about any group in the country. I think linebackers and secondary-wise, Georgia is ahead of most schools in the country. The ACC has a lot of good teams. That game last night was a good game, FSU and Miami. Anyway, I would say Georgia’s personnel is better than NC State’s. Certainly.”

On his young players playing in Sanford Stadium...
“I don’t know if that helps or hurt or what. I do know the NC State crowd was loud and they were fired up. It was a big-time atmosphere. Obviously, Georgia’s stadium is a little bigger. They’ll be about 30,000 at Georgia’s (stadium) than NC State. What do they hold, around 60 or so? 56. OK. A little more than 30,000 more will be there screaming and yelling for the Bulldogs. But when you can’t hear, you can’t hear anyways, so it doesn’t matter if it’s 60 or 90 or 100 thousand. But we were able to audible to a couple of runs, change it from one side to the other. Hopefully, we can change a play or two here or there. You have to change them every know and then. Not a lot but a little bit.”

On Stephen Garcia's ability to call audibles...
“Hopefully, we can help him out. As coaches, we have to help him out better. You don’t just send him up there say go change it to something you see. Nowadays, the defense disguise too well. Even Sam Bradford at Oklahoma last year, his coaches pretty much sent in the play from the sideline. A lot of schools do that nowasays. We need to help Stephen more in that situation. Hopefully, we can do that a little bit this week. Not a lot. It will be very loud. We’re not going to go up there and change every play. At some point, we need to get some better plays on than whatwe had last week.”

On the rivalry between him and Georgia...
"All that has worn off. I think it’s just Georgia and South Carolina playing now. Simple as that. Us against them. No more this coach or that coach. Us against them. Back when Todd Ellis played, it was Todd against the Dawgs. Now it’s just South Carolina.”

On his team's health...
"OK, we're about as healthy as we can be going into Georgia. Rodney Paulk suffered a season ending injury. But other than that, we're very healthy and looking forward to seeing if we can't play a little better offensively against the Bulldogs and try to score a few more points. But anyway, our guys are looking forward to going to Sanford Stadium -- first SEC game -- and playing the Georgia Bulldogs."

On his offense last week...
"It was a very conservative attack. We had some bad plays on about three those occasions. We had the offensive interference, Jarivs ran backward, I think we had another penalty or something happened on another play that sort of took us out. But, yea, it was a little too conservative at times there. Hopefully, hopefully, we can get the ball moving around a little bit better this game. Yea, it was probably a little way too conservative an approach. Our defense was playing very well. But other than that we had some plays that didn't quite get executed and we had some plays that didn't have much a chance. We've got to do a better job getting some good plays out there and going from there."