Steve Spurrier Quotations | Page 2

Sidney Rice and Blake and all those guys had some super performances, ... Sidney, you know they're trying to stop him. He's close to unstoppable. Everybody's stoppable but he's some player. Little Kenny McKinley made a bunch of key catches all over the place. It was a fun game. This was big for our football program and the University of South Carolina. Hopefully we can gain some confidence and build on it, and not let it get to us.

Sidney had a super game. He played his heart out. He made some big catches for us. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to win the game.

Sidney broke his thumb. He will not participate in the spring game, but should be at full speed for summer workouts.

I think it was best for all concerned. I had already done my things there and I left, and to do it again wouldn't have made sense for me or for Florida. So I hope people can realize it was time to move on. I feel fortunate South Carolina offered me a chance here to try to do some things that have never been done before. Almost every victory around here is the first time that ever happened.

When we'd win the SEC we'd get back late and Deano would keep it open for us,

We felt like Blake is much better prepared mentally, physically. He's had an excellent summer working out, and it's clear to all of us here that he's our best guy to go out there. So when it's obvious, we've named him the starter. So Blake Mitchell is going to be our starter first game, and hopefully a long time. We'll go from there. Back-ups we don't know yet, we're trying a lot of guys right there. But Blake's earned it and he's our starter.

The only thing I think I got was a little humility to the fact that you have a greater appreciation for all coaches. Sometimes you can coach your heart out, hard as you can, and the other guy just may have a better team and better players.

We have competition for positions all the time. So if some of these other linemen look like they can play better than the linemen we have out there, we'll certainly give them a chance.

We're not a well-oiled running machine by any means right now. It wasn't very pretty for our offense. Hopefully we'll learn from it and go on. We did practice well this week. But right now we practice better than we play the game.

We're very proud of the effort of our players. The effort was there. It was the little things here and there that made us a loser. We're just not sharp enough right now to beat a good team. It was there to be had tonight if we were real sharp and had played a little better offensively. Holding them to 17 points should be good enough to win a conference game.