South Carolina Head Coach Steve Spurrier News Conference Comments
December 31, 2012
Opening statement:
“I think our guys have practiced pretty well. You always hope that leads to an excellent game, but you never know what’s going to happen when the real ball is kicked off and you start playing. Preparation-wise I think we’ve done a pretty good job thus far. We’ve got, I think, two mature teams, probably, getting ready to battle out there tomorrow. This is going to be a chamber of commerce day here, 74 or 75 degrees. I’ll admit our guys like warm weather a little bit better than cold weather. It should be a heck of a game and we’re looking forward to it.”
On South Carolina’s quarterback situation:
“Let me address that a little differently than I did the last time I talked about it. Connor Shaw has been our starter. I always sort of believe you should tell one guy it’s his game unless he gets hurt or it really goes terribly wrong and you have to make a change. But Connor’s been our starter pretty much all year. He feels, and we all feel, he’s 100 percent healthy. So right now we’re going into it that it’s his game, this is your game, let’s go. Don’t worry about making a mistake, getting jerked out or anything like that. Dylan is going to play though. Like we said, Dylan is going to play in there somewhere. But, again, I just believe it’s important to tell one guy, ‘Hey, you’re going to be the quarterback as long as you play well.’ So that’s where we are right now. We’re hoping Connor plays about all the game; that’s what we’re hoping for. He’s done that off and on for about two years now. So he’s been our starting quarterback and he certainly deserves the right to go into it with, ‘Hey this is my game, let’s go.’”
On the hype behind an SEC/Big 10 match-up:
“Like I said the other day, I think when the ball is kicked off it’s our 11 guys against their 11 for three hours or three and a half. All the hype of even Michigan-South Carolina, SEC-Big 10, this, that and the other, it’s who plays the best that day is probably who’s going to win the thing, who plays the best tomorrow.”
On Jadeveon Clowney:
“He’s handled himself pretty well. He’s played well, obviously being a first team All-American in every poll and every service. I think he’s really our only first team time All-SEC guy. Ace Sanders was first team on specials teams punt return. He’s been our star player. He’s pretty good one-on-one versus pass rushers. I don’t know what Coach Hoke’s got planned for him. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we. But going with what a lot of teams have done, a lot of teams have left a running back on his side and sometimes put an extra tight end standing up over there. I think the last team we played always tried to slide their protection toward him to try to get a guard and tackle helping out. We’ve got ways of moving him around, all that kind of stuff. We’ll see how it all plays out.”
On the challenge of getting ready for a bowl game:
“What we do, and I’m sure what Coach Brady probably does also, is you talk about it before the season. We hope to be in a bowl game, and we hope to win a bowl game. I think about every coach’s goal is once you get into the season let’s not only get one, let’s win a bowl game. So now we’re at that point.”
On young players coming up that can contribute next year:
“It’s hard to look that far down the road. As soon as this game is over we’ll start looking at the guys and replacing the senior players and so forth. But they’ve got a little bit of work. Nosovitch, our quarterback, Brendan Nosovitch has looked good in our little Monday night scrimmages. We don’t tackle; we keep guys up the way we scrimmage nowadays. He’s done well, and some of those young receivers are doing well. Kwinton Smith’s got a chance to be a good player next year.”
On how the players’ attitudes have changed with success:
“It’s definitely because of the senior leadership and even some junior leadership. The senior class, as you know, is the winningest in school history, I think winningest by a long shot. They’ve got 37 I think right now in four years, averaging a little more than nine a year. Those guys, they’ve set some goals and gone after them. We haven’t hit all of them. We didn’t win the SEC, but we did win our division and have won a bunch of games, won the state championship several times as we all know. So they’ve accomplished a lot and they want to win this one. They want to go out a winner just like the Michigan seniors want to go out a winner also. Give those guys credit for the success we’ve had the last three years particularly. Four years ago was a similar year, but the last three have been pretty good.”
