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Spurrier defends practice philosophy
Steve Spurrier waits Saturday as rain soaks Williams-Brice Stadium, postponing the planned scrimmage.
Rich Glickstein/rglickstein@thestate.com
Written by JOSEPH PERSON
jperson@thestate.com
Posted on 08.16.09
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South Carolina players waited for the rain to stop Saturday afternoon.
And waited. And waited some more.
After about an hour-long downpour, USC coach Steve Spurrier postponed the Gamecocks’ scheduled scrimmage for a day rather than risk injury to his players and chew up the sod at Williams-Brice Stadium.
“Just felt like players had gotten stiff, didn’t want to tear up the field too badly, and it made sense just to wait and do this (today),” Spurrier said.
The Gamecocks will try again at 3 this afternoon, when the chance of precipitation is 40 percent. The scrimmage is closed to the public.
After announcing the postponement, Spurrier took a minute to defend his practice philosophy, which he characterized as physical and smart.
“We practice physical. We don’t try to hurt our teammates. I’ve been doing that my whole career for 20 years, trying to protect teammates,” Spurrier said. “We don’t get guys hurt and we’ve been pretty successful doing that, (winning) a bunch of conference championships.
“And I can assure our fans we’re practicing here just like our teams did at Florida, our teams did at Duke and everywhere I’ve coached.”
The issue of how coaches approach preseason drills came up two weeks ago at Tennessee when the Volunteers sustained a couple of injuries before putting on full pads in Lane Kiffin’s first camp in Knoxville.
Spurrier said he is all for physical practices, but does not want his players to hit teammates who are in vulnerable positions. He said he spoke to Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops, his former defensive coordinator at Florida, on Saturday, and Stoops takes the same approach.
Spurrier said getting players injured should not be associated with being physical.
“We’re practicing physically,” he said, “but we’re also taking care of our teammates.”
Reach Person at (803) 771-8496.
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