During his weekly press conference Tuesday, South Carolina Steve Spurrier says his team is weary of dual-threat quarterback Treon Harris in prep for Saturday’s game at Florida, a team that’s won back-to-back games since Will Muschamp hot seat rumors hit a fever pitch.
The Gamecocks (4-5) need two wins over their final three games to reach bowl season for the sixth straight year.
Opening statement: “The Florida Gators, the team that seemed to have found their quarterback. Seems like we go through the year and the other team seems to find their quarterback. The Gators have started Treon Harris the last two games against Georgia and Vanderbilt and he has played very well for them. They’ve always had one of the best defenses in the country and in the conference, and if you take away the Alabama game they’d probably be there right at the top of most defensive categories. They’ve been that way for a while now, very good defense and now they got their offense straightened out, playing with very few turnovers now. That’s what makes them a very good team at this point.
“We’re going to have our hands full, but we’ll look forward to going down there. Our guys have bounced back as well as can be expected right now from another tough loss. Got to put it behind us, shake it off and get ready to play the very best we can down there.”
On maintaining a high confidence level despite four losses over the last five games: “This experience is different the way we’ve lost games. Sometimes when you get beat 31-10 you just say these guys are better than us and away you go. Now you look back at this play, that play and wish it had gone different.”
On his relationship with Muschamp: “He was coaching as an assistant at LSU when I was at Florida. He’s a good guy and a good coach, looks like he’s turning the corner down there, hopefully he will turn it around after Saturday and win the rest of them. When the game kicks off you don’t really think about the other coach. You think about your players and trying to help them win the game.”
On trying to defend Florida’s running game: “It concerns the heck out of us. We’ll need to get a lot guys up there — everybody we play you have to get a lot of guys up there right now. Then you have to defend the pass too, they have guys that can run and catch. They’re a pretty good team right now, a lot better than where they were earlier in the year.”
The SEC East championship picture: “Florida is still in the hunt for the Eastern Division, I guess they need Georgia to lose one and Missouri to lose a couple. Everybody has tough games down the stretch. We’re finishing up, our conference record is obviously not very good. We’ve got three losses in there that we had three leads we didn’t hold and we all know that and there’s nothing we can do about it now.”
Will the Auburn offensive game plan be used at Florida?: “I don’t know, sometimes you hope that this, that and the other will happen. We need to stay out on the field longer, staying out there longer is more important than scoring in some of these games as we all know.”
Comparing a Dylan Thompson and Pharoh Cooper-led offense to previous years: “We don’t look at it any particular way except we haven’t won the games. We have faltered at the end as we all know, there are some calls I wish I had back. The only thing anybody cares about is the “W” and the “L” and we’re on the bad side of a lot of games where we’ve made a lot of yards.”
On defensive adjustments or lack thereof: “We’re struggling so much with the pass rush and maybe blitzing would help. We shut them (Tennessee) out in the third quarter last game. We’ve had some stops, but as it turned out on third downs and fourth downs we’ve not been very good this year and that’s cost us.”
