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Spurrier on whether Carolina defense can stop Gurley: ‘Ask me after the game’
By Jordan Cox
Published:
So far through the first two games of the 2014 season, the South Carolina defense has been less than desirable. The Gamecocks were shredded on the opening night of the season by Texas A&M, and still showed some holes in Carolina’s 33-23 win over East Carolina on Saturday.
But when asked about the last two times the Georgia Bulldogs have come to Columbia, the Head Ball Coach seemingly began to reminisce.
“The last two times they came in here our defense held them to [six] and seven,” Spurrier said. “So I would say those two games were pretty good, wouldn’t you?”
But by all indications and the national media attention, this Georgia team is different. They put up 45 points in their season-opener against Clemson. Many analysts have them as the frontrunner for the College Football Playoff. They also have the Heisman favorite thus far in their arsenal.
“Oh, geez, ask me after the game,” Spurrier said when asked how confident he was the Carolina defense could slow down Gurley. “We’ll do our best to see if we can. We’ve not really slowed down the other team this year yet. But we’ve gotta have hopes and beliefs we can, certainly.”
Gurley is one those players you can’t stop, you can only hope to slow him down. He’ll get his. Spurrier knows that.
“[Gurley] is a big, strong back,” Spurrier said. “But he’s gonna get his yards, there’s no question about that. He’s going to get his yards against everybody. They ran out the last nine minutes of the game against us last year. So we certainly know what they’re capable of doing.”
South Carolina defensive coordinator Lorenzo Ward has had an array of issues so far, but Spurrier feels he has the personnel to turn it around.
“We’ve got the same defensive coaches that were considered pretty good coaches last year, now all of a sudden we can’t get the other team off the field very well,” Spurrier said. “We don’t force very many punts. We’ve got to improve on that. We think we’ve got the players to do that, but at some point we’ve got to be a lot more disciplined playing our assignments and so forth.”
Saturday’s contest represents the fourth time in the last five years that Georgia and South Carolina have faced each other as ranked opponents.
After living in Birmingham, Ala., Jordan left the ground zero of SEC Nation to head south to Florida to tell the unique stories of the renowned tradition of SEC football. In his free time, his mission is to find the best locales around.
