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Spurrier playing coy with expectations
By
Travis Haney (
Contact)
The Post and Courier
Monday, August 25, 2008
COLUMBIA — Wanna know what South Carolina's going to look like in its opener Thursday night against North Carolina State?
Hey, you're not alone. So does Steve Spurrier.
"You don't know exactly what you've got until you go play," Spurrier said Sunday during his first weekly news conference of the season. "We have confidence our team will play well. But, until we do, it's just sort of hope and confidence that we will play well. So, we've got to go do it, and then go do it again and again and again."
Spurrier's typical weekly preview is to either poormouth his team or, sometimes, build it up with compliments. Neither applied Sunday.
His offense is being led by a quarterback, Tommy Beecher, with little experience. The offensive line is deeper with some scattered experience, but it's still widely unproven. The receivers beyond Kenny McKinley echo the same chord.
The defense and special teams have new coaching leaders, but no one is certain how that'll translate exactly.
"I usually have a feel," Spurrier said, "but I don't know what's going to happen."
Spurrier is 3-0 in his openers at USC. Just as Thursday will be, two of those games (Central Florida in 2005, Mississippi State in 2006) were
the ESPN national telecast to open the entire college football season.
Also, it's the Gamecocks' first chance, in about 10 months, to end their five-game losing streak.
"We need a win, no doubt," linebacker Eric Norwood said. "It's a big game, just to build that momentum back up."
Last year's 6-6 finish in mind, senior receiver Kenny McKinley said the team has a more "humble approach" this time around.
As a result, it's a more muzzled Spurrier you hear and a South Carolina team that's hopeful of sneaking up on opponents.
That's the case just a year after Spurrier boisterously talked about lifting the expectations for the program.
"Again, we're trying to stay a little bit underneath the radar, whatever you want to call it about not trying to talk too big," he said Sunday.
"Hopefully (we'll) let our play do whatever talking needs to be said. I don't know if we've got a really good team, an average team or what. I don't know yet.
"We've got to go in the stadium here Thursday night and start finding out how we can perform. We've done a lot of things differently around here, and we'll find out if it pays off this coming Thursday night."
The Gamecocks and Wolfpack will kick off at 8 p.m. (TV: ESPN).
Sunday was also the first look at USC's depth chart entering the season. Here are a few highlights.
--Senior Stoney Woodson has jumped senior Carlos Thomas at corner. Spurrier said Woodson, Thomas and freshman Akeem Auguste will all rotate.
--Spencer Lanning is listed as the starter at punter, but Spurrier reiterated that Lanning and freshman Ryan Doerr will both punt Thursday.
--In a three-receiver set, Moe Brown and Dion LeCorn are the second and third receivers to complement Kenny McKinley. Brown would likely get the nod if there's a tight end on the field.
--The defense was laid out in the 4-2-5 format, as expected. Darian Stewart is the starter at the "spur" spot, a linebacker-safety hybrid. Spurrier said USC will not know until Wednesday, perhaps, if Stewart (foot) is available. Converted receiver Larry Freeman is Stewart's backup; he's turned heads in camp.
--Brian Maddox and Taylor Rank have an "or" beside their names for second-string running back behind Mike Davis. Rank worked with the first team when Davis was missing with a shoulder injury.
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August 25, 2008
Will NCST Stay Grounded?
Scott Hood
GamecockCentral.com Staff Writer
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Despite the recent decision by North Carolina State head coach Tom O'Brien to name multi-talented redshirt freshman Russell Wilson as his starting quarterback, Steve Spurrier expects O'Brien to continue emphasizing what has made him a successful Division I head coach.
And that's smash-mouth football.
O'Brien had a reputation while the head coach at Boston College of thinking run first and pass second, even when he had top-notch quarterbacks like Matt Hasselbeck or, more recently, Matt Ryan calling the signals.
"His style has been to play with very few mistakes, run the ball and play good defense," said Spurrier, who starts his fourth year as Gamecock head coach. "I guess they might have a little bit more of a pro-style offense now, maybe similar somewhat to what we do."
So, while Wilson has been described as a quarterback who's has the potential of being dangerous both running and throwing the football, Spurrier anticipates seeing a heavy dose of N.C. State's backfield, particularly junior Jamelle Eugene, last season's leading rusher with 667 yards, and senior Andre Brown, the Wolfpack's top ball carrier in 2005.
Running the ball proved successful last season against the Gamecocks, which finished last in the SEC in rushing defense. Spurrier believes the Wolfpack will utilize Eugene early in Thursday's game to see if the USC defense is up to the challenge of stopping the Wolfpack's running game.
"Jamelle Eugene seems to be their top guy right now," Spurrier said. "It seems like Eugene is a player that can go the distance. He's going to get the ball a bunch, there's no question. Every team that plays us is going to feature the run first until we prove we can stop the run. It's pretty simple. Hopefully our guys are ready to be strong up front and tackle well and so forth."
O'Brien has made it a point of emphasis in the off-season of improving N.C. State's running game, which averaged a paltry 89.2 yards per game in 2007. As a matter of comparison, USC was last in the SEC in rushing last season with an average of 113.7 yards per game.
In fact, N.C. State was outgained on the ground by its 12 opponents by more than a 2-to-1 margin (2,237 yards to 1,071 yards).
"We have to run the ball better," O'Brien said. "We can't be second-to-last in the conference in rushing offense. Jamelle Eugene did a tremendous job in the last six games and a tremendous job in spring practice. He has proven he can be the ball carrier. He is going to have to come out of the game and he is going to have to rest and other people are going to have to come into the game so we will have a rotation."
Redshirt junior Toney Baker would have given the Wolfpack a formidable backfield trio, but he underwent surgery recently to clean out some residue in his knee and should be sidelined for several weeks.
Eugene started the 2007 season third on the depth chart at running back before rising to No. 1 by the halfway point when Baker suffered a season-ending injury in the season opener and Brown (447 rushing yards in 2007) broke his foot in the sixth game of the season. Eugene played 445 snaps in the final seven games, an average of 63.5 plays per game.
He posted three games with 100 yards or more rushing, averaging 83.7 yards per game. He was on the field for 76 snaps against Virginia on Oct. 27. Two weeks later, he had 159 rushing yards on 32 carries in the victory over arch-rival North Carolina.
After that latter performance, it's no wonder O'Brien started calling Eugene the "Energizer Bunny" because, he said, Eugene "just kept going and going." The nickname stuck through the spring when Eugene carried most of the load at running back while his comrades recuperated from their injuries.
N.C. State's failure to make a bowl games, though, left Eugene with an empty feeling. The Wolfpack won four straight games to reach the .500 mark before lopsided losses to Wake Forest and Maryland ended O'Brien's first season in Raleigh on a disappointing note with a final mark of 5-7.
"I feel like last year was C-plus for me," Eugene said. "My team didn't win. To be successful as a running back, your team has to win. We won a few games then we fell off at the end. On the whole, we didn't have a great season. I can't separate my individual success from the team if we are not winning."
Baker's absence, together with the loss of Donald Bowens, the team's top returning receiver, for the entire season with stress fractures in his back, has limited O'Brien's options offensively.
With a young quarterback making his first career start, will N.C. State look to pound the ball right at a Gamecock defense that struggled to stop the run last season? Considering O'Brien's history, it might happen.
The two-deep on N.C. State's offensive line averages 6-foot-5, 309 pounds, so they're big enough to dominate opponents up front.
If USC defeats N.C. State, Spurrier believes they'll have to earn it since O'Brien is a coach who preaches a philosophy of his own club not beating itself with careless errors.
"His teams have a history of playing very solid with very few mistakes," Spurrier said. "That's a very good compliment to say your players play within the rules and play with great discipline. We're trying to get that established around here a lot better."
O'Brien was named the 33rd head coach in the history of N.C. State on Dec. 30, 2006 after directing Boston College to eight consecutive winning seasons and seven consecutive bowl victories. He left Boston College after 10 seasons (1997-2006) as its head coach as the school's all-time leader in wins (75)
"His teams at Boston College obviously were good. They came close to winning the conference championship last year," Spurrier said. "Of course, they had a new coach but it was mostly the guys that coach O'Brien had recruited and trained and so forth. N.C. State wouldn't have paid him a whole bunch of money if they didn't think he was one of the best coaches in the country."
After most of North Carolina's top talent left the state during the 2007 recruiting cycle, O'Brown vowed to keep the best talent at home. N.C. State signed eight of the top 30 prospects in the Tar Heel State last February, more than any other school, including three of the top six players, according to Rivals.com.
"They've turned the corner up there a little bit," Spurrier said. "I think their recruiting has been very good the last several years. They're a good-looking team."
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August 25, 2008
Breaking the Streak
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David Cloninger
GamecockCentral.com Staff Writer
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They don't like talking about it, but it was bound to come up.
"Coach Spurrier always preaches that we're only as good as our last game and we lost our last game, so we're not very good right now," senior linebacker
Jasper Brinkley said.
It's a brand-new season. There's a lot that's changed since that bitter day in November, when
Mark Buchholz's field goal sailed through the uprights and brought South Carolina's 2007 season crashing to earth.
But the fact remains that the last time the Gamecocks took the field, they lost their fifth straight game. Although it's a new season, the losing streak still carries over.
It's the longest such streak at USC since 2002, when that team likewise finished a season with five straight losses. It's also the longest streak of coach
Steve Spurrier's career, topping the four-game skids he had during his first year at Duke and his second year with the Washington Redskins.
Brinkley said he knew that.
Eric Norwood,
Chris Culliver and
Kenny McKinley said they didn't, although they probably could have guessed it.
It's not really something one would brag about.
"It's over and done," Norwood said. "We're going to remember it, just work off it. Just remember how we lost those-type games. Try to pay attention to the ways we lost them.
"But I mean, I doubt that will happen again."
Thursday's season-opener hosting N.C. State was important anyway. National TV, first game of the season, etc.
Now the Gamecocks have the burden of breaking a lengthy stretch of sour results, too.
"It's important anyway just because it's the first game and it's going to be the start of our new season," McKinley said. "It is an important game, but it's just another game. We lost five games, that's in the past. It's a new season, we just want to start the season off the right way."
"It doesn't change if we've won four in a row or lost four in a row, I don't think," Spurrier said. "As players and coaches you have the ability to try your best to forget the last game whether you won it or lost it.
"Obviously, we didn't win it."
Spurrier went on to say he didn't really believe the old adage of learning more from a loss than a win. He believes in a much simpler creed, one popularized by Vince Lombardi.
"Winning breeds more winning and unfortunately, losing does the same thing," Spurrier said. "So we need to break that losing habit we've got right now."
Culliver, the sophomore speedster who should be starting at free safety on Thursday, said the team doesn't mention the streak as any kind of rallying cry, yet it's in the back of everybody's minds. They use it as motivation when there's a dropoff in practice.
"If somebody's bending over when we're not supposed to, 'C'mon, work harder. You're not going to be bent over in the game.' Things like that," Culliver said. "We push each other just to try to be better football players.
"Coach Black Iron (strength coach Mark Smith) been preaching to us, talking about, '6-6, we're not trying to go there.' We run more gassers, we do everything harder and everybody tries to work harder and to be a better football player."
Spurrier pointed out that only time will tell if the Gamecocks are ready to do battle, but one change can already be seen in the preseason predictions. There's nobody confidently saying USC is ready to take the SEC crown, not after 2007 ended so abruptly.
"Of course we're not going to talk … last year we kind of came up about how we were going to win the SEC and all that and we didn't live up to it," McKinley said. "So now we're just going to take the humble approach and go into every game and just play hard to the finish."
It all begins on Thursday. The Gamecocks are hoping the memory of the hollow feelings they had in their stomachs last year will be sufficient motivation.
"Going on that 0-5 losing streak doesn't really feel too good," Norwood said. "Getting that win ...
