Bowl loss, unmet goals kept season from being great
COLUMBIA -- Steve Spurrier called a press conference Friday afternoon to set the tone for his team's offseason.
The Gamecocks probably won't be happy to learn it will be much the same as a year ago, when their head coach spent a good bit of the offseason reminding them of a subpar bowl performance and applying heat to his starting quarterback.
"We thought it was a good year, but it wasn't a great year," Spurrier said. "A great year would have been to win the bowl game and get that 10th victory. We didn't do it, didn't play very well in that game."
The No. 22 Gamecocks finished the season 9-5 after falling 26-17 to Florida State on Dec. 31 in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. Spurrier hadn't spoken to the media since immediately following that game, and the two-week break allowed him to collect his thoughts.
"I know a lot of people believe when you win the bowl game everything is a lot nicer through the offseason, and it probably is," he said. "On the other side of it, when you don't play very well, the coaches are a little bit more irritated and hopefully can get the attention of their guys and have a productive spring practice."
That strategy worked last offseason when Spurrier took every chance he could to remind the team of its 20-7 loss to Connecticut in the Papajohns.com Bowl. South Carolina responded with just the third season in school history of more than eight wins. Spurrier served notice Friday that the Gamecocks will hear more about the Chick-fil-A Bowl between now and when they open the 2011 season on Sept. 3 against East Carolina.
"We were not a real strong team overall [this season]," he said. "When we played close to perfect, we could beat a team like Alabama that didn't play very well. We are not at the level we hope to be. Certainly, we believe there is an opportunity for us to become a top of the SEC type team, but there are some good ones in the SEC."
Spurrier revisited his team's preseason goals list: Win eight games, check. Win nine games, check. Win the SEC East, check. Beat Clemson, check. Finish in final top 25, check. Left undone were: win 10 games, go undefeated at home, win the SEC and win the bowl game.
"That's a good year when those kind of things happen but certainly not a great year," he said. "We will set these goals again next season and see how many of them we can reach."
Several national observers think the Gamecocks could reach plenty. The Orange County Register (fifth), the San Jose Mercury News (seventh), SI.com (ninth) and ESPN.com (11th) all project South Carolina in the top 11 in their early 2011 projections.
The Gamecocks have not gone into a season ranked higher than No. 17 by the Associated Press since at least 1967, the last year from which records are available.
"Our guys are not very good at handling a lot of success that is for sure, but I don't think the coaches will tell them they're that good," Spurrier said. "Hopefully, they won't believe it after the way we played the last two games. We don't deserve much preseason ranking I don't think."
The offseason also could be uncomfortable again for quarterback Stephen Garcia, who has started 28 consecutive games for the Gamecocks. Garcia had the third-most prolific passing season in school history with 3,059 yards, tied for second in single-season touchdown passes with 20 and completed 62.4 percent of his passes, the fifth-best single-season total in school history. However, he threw five interceptions in the final two games of the season.
"He still has a few what we call Stephen Garcia plays," Spurrier said. "We just can't get rid of those. It's unfortunate, here and there, a few bad plays occur, but, anyway, he played pretty well most of the year, certainly."
Redshirt freshman Connor Shaw will get plenty of chances this offseason to win the starting job, Spurrier said, echoing his comments from the 2010 preseason.
"Stephen is going to play like Stephen. I don't know that practice helps him, I really don't," Spurrier said. "He pretty much plays the way he plays at times. We'll keep working with him of course and see if he can improve his fundamentals of throwing and so forth, but we've got to see if Connor can play better than him."
South Carolina's 2011 football schedule includes 10 teams that played in bowl games last season.
The 2010 SEC East champion released its schedule on Friday, and among the non-conference games are a Sept. 3 contest against East Carolina in Charlotte and the home opener against Navy on Sept. 17. After Navy, South Carolina hosts Vanderbilt, national champion Auburn and Kentucky on successive weekends.
The Gamecocks, who finished at 9-5 and ranked No. 22 in the final Associated Press poll, open SEC play on Sept. 10 against Georgia.
South Carolina travels to Mississippi State on Oct. 15. After an open date comes games at Tennessee and Arkansas. South Carolina finishes with three straight at home - Florida on Nov. 12, The Citadel on Nov. 19 and Clemson on Nov. 26.
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