COLUMBIA, S.C. - No one's more disappointed with South Carolina's mistakes against Georgia than coach Steve Spurrier. But no one wants the Gamecocks to put it behind them more than the head ball coach.
Spurrier knows too well you can't move forward when you're looking behind especially when South Carolina came oh-so-close to the upset of the young season in its 17-15 loss between the hedges last Saturday.
``It was disappointing. ... We don't have anyone to blame but ourselves for some things that happened in the course of the game,'' Spurrier said Tuesday.
And there were several critical errors, any one that could've made the difference between victory and defeat.
Sidney Rice's 20-yard touchdown catch was called back on a motion penalty; Josh Brown missed an extra point and Ryan Succop a field goal; Blake Mitchell overthrew Rice on a two-point conversion try that would've tied things in the final period; and the Gamecocks gave up a 27-yard pass from D.J. Shockley to Bryan McClendon on third-and-22 from Georgia's 8 late in the fourth quarter.
That's a lot of baggage for Spurrier's inexperienced Gamecocks to carry home. Still, he says, ``I think we got it out of our system. We should by now.''
The loss was Spurrier's first since returning to college football at South Carolina.
Next up, Alabama (2-0), which comes to Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday off a 30-21 victory over Southern Miss.
``Obviously, we'd love to get this one, but we're not going to put a whole lot of undue pressure on ourselves right now,'' Spurrier said. ``Our goal is to improve each week and our goal is to get a bowl game, win more than we lose.''
Spurrier has a plan to make the Gamecocks winners in the SEC. But even he has toned down his expectations a bit when dealing with his players, several of whom were in high school during Spurrier's last days at Florida.
When watching Georgia game film, Spurrier noticed Rice was too slow getting down and opened himself up to unnecessary hits. ``Then I start thinking, this is the first game he's ever played,'' the coach said.
Later Spurrier picked apart the performance of his quarterback, Blake Mitchell. The sophomore had not dropped as quickly as he should out of the shotgun formation. Again, Spurrier caught himself. ``Shoot, this is the second game he's ever played,'' he thought.
``Hopefully, we can improve as we go and get better as the season progresses,'' Spurrier said. ``But we've got a lot of players doing some things for the first time.''
The Gamecocks have had their share of problems on offense, mostly on the ground. A game after they rushed for 32 yards against Central Florida, they managed only 43 yards on 23 attempts at Georgia.
Senior Daccus Turman was back from a one-game suspension for his role in last fall's Clemson-South Carolina brawl and was expected to take some pressure off first-year tailbacks Mike Davis and Bobby Wallace. Turman finished with 22 yards.
Alabama rallied from 21-10 down to defeat Southern Miss 30-21 this past Saturday. The Crimson Tide allowed only 9 yards on the ground all game.
``For us to be successful, we need to run the ball much better, and Alabama's tough to run on, but we've still got to run at them,'' Spurrier said.
``So we're not going to just come throw every down and ask Blake (Mitchell) to try and control the game,'' Spurrier continued. ``We've got to hand it off to our running backs and we've got to block some people and make some rush yards this week.''
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Thursday
June 26th, 2025
9:31PM
