Coach's Corner: South Carolina's Steve Spurrier

Paul Myerberg | USA TODAY Sports

In no particular order, the following items can be found on South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier's springtime to-do list:

Find a quarterback. Break in a new co-defensive coordinator. Locate a crop of new wide receivers to compeiment all-conference pick Pharoh Cooper. Identify a handful of new contributors from a young cast on defense.

There's also this: Spurrier and South Carolina want to move beyond last season.

It speaks volumes about the success he's had with the Gamecocks that a 7-6 finish was viewed nationally as a disappointment — coming as it did on the heels of three years in a row with 11 wins.

It was a "decent year," Spurrier told USA TODAY Sports. The Gamecocks still finished with a winning record and won a bowl game, which wasn't too common in the Southeastern Conference — the top five teams in the West Division all lost in the postseason — and did so despite a defense that ranked statistically among the worst in program history.

"Statistically, we gave up more yards and more points than any defense in school history last year," Spurrier said. "So to manage a winning record and win the bowl game, it was not all that bad a season when you look at what happened to us on the defensive side."

Spurrier spoke by phone with USA TODAY Sports national college football writer Paul Myerberg about last season, his team's in-progress spring practices, relative expectations in the SEC East Division, his golf game and his exercise regimen.

Q: What are you goals for the spring? I know you've got some changes on the staff and the personnel turnover. I also know you've done this a million times. What's on your spring to-do list?

A: First of all, we need to find a quarterback. We've got three players here on campus right now sort of fighting it out. A kid named Connor Mitch has an opportunity we think to be a really good player. We've got a freshman, incoming player, Lorenzo Nunez, but he won't be here until the summer. So we're very inexperienced at quarterback. These players have not played hardly at all. I think Connor Mitch got in two games last year. That was it.

And then wide receiver. We had three or four wide receivers that were either seniors or moved on, left early, one of those kinds of things. Pharoh Cooper's back though. He's probably the preseason All-America player — if we have any on the entire team it's probably him. Pharoh was first-team All-SEC last year at wide receiver. He's really a good player. He can play the Wildcat position, running back, wide receiver, punt returner. He's an exceptional player.

Defensively we're going to do some things differently. We've hired Jon Hoke, who was the secondary coach for the Bears the last six, seven years. He was with me at Florida, my last year at Florida in 2001. So he's going to help coordinate (the defense) with Lorenzo Ward, who was with us last year. We're doing things differently on defense.

Hopefully we're going to be a lot better. Statistically, we gave up more yards and more points than any defense in school history last year. So to manage a winning record and win the bowl game, it was not all that bad a season when you look at what happened to us on the defensive side. We're making progress, we think, but we do have a long way to go. It's an important spring in the fact that we'll have so many new players next year.

Q: Pharoh Cooper is your most experienced quarterback, I think, since he did toss a pair of touchdowns last year.

A: Yeah, he can do it all.

Q: There wasn't any doubt last year that Dylan Thompson was going to start at quarterback. Before that, Connor Shaw built a bit of a legacy over a few seasons. When was the last time you had to do a true quarterback battle like this during the spring?

A: I'm not sure when we've had to break in a completely new quarterback like we do here. Maybe at Florida after Danny Wuerffel. He started his junior and senior year. Doug Johnson followed him the next year, then Jesse Palmer came in and so forth. But even back then we'd get way ahead and Doug was able to play a bit at the end of a lot of games. These quarterbacks just have very little experience. But we think they're talented players so they should play well. We're sort of high on Connor Mitch. We think he's matured, he's grown up. He threw the ball very well in our first spring practice.

Q: When it came to hiring Jon Hoke, do you typically lean toward assistants you've worked with before?

A: Well, I leaned toward him because I knew what he could do and he was available, finally. His daughters are seniors in high school now. Of course they had the change over there with the Bears and I think he was anxious to come be a coordinator. We have a good working relationship. The timing worked out perfectly for him to come here.

Q: You have no worries about how a new voice, particularly at coordinator, will blend with the returning staff?

A: Not really. Jon's an unassuming type of guy. He's really worked with some excellent defensive coaches in the NFL. Lovie Smith, Rod Marinelli, Dom Capers — he was with Dom a long time. I think we'll have a good, solid plan, be fundamentally sound. Just put our players out there and let them play. We've got a lot of new defensive players that we think are going to help.

Q: About last season: Did you carry any disappointment into the offseason?

A: Yeah, we were a little disappointed, certainly. In the middle of the year we lost four of five games at one point. But to the credit of our players and coaches, we hung in there and won three of our last four games. Had a winning record and won the bowl game. And to think 10 years ago, when I first got here, only three teams in school history had a winning season and won the bowl game. So we were able to do that for the fourth year in a row, four bowl games in a row. I think there's only three teams in the country that have done that right now in the power conferences. That's something to sort of hang our hat on. It was not a completely disappointing year. But it was below what we hoped would happen, certainly.

Q: I remember you saying after the first time you won 11 games with the Gamecocks that everyone will expect you to win 12 the next season. Did you have a feeling that success may breed some sort of complacency, or maybe some extremely heightened expectations?

A: Oh, certainly. I don't know who said this, but once a man's mind is stretched to new horizons it will never return to its original dimension. Something like that. A person's mind is stretched to winning 11 (games), you don't want to go back and say, "Hey, 7-6 is pretty good." We're not saying 7-6 is pretty good, but it wasn't terrible. It was a decent year. It wasn't a good year, but you're in the SEC, have a winning record and win the bowl game. People in Knoxville, they're still doing cartwheels because they were 7-6 and won the bowl game. People in Arkansas are doing cartwheels. They're 7-6 and won their bowl game.

I know it's all relative at times. At South Carolina, our history and tradition certainly is not Alabama, LSU and so forth. It was a decent year but not what we hoped, certainly.

Q: It's a double-edged sword, you know. You have success but then you need to match or exceed what you've done.

A: Yeah, our fans are pretty good. I mean, we were all a little disappointed during that streak of games we lost. We lost three of them with four or five minutes left in the game. Couldn't hold the other team and couldn't make a couple first downs. We got beat. Only got blown out maybe twice, two games that we thoroughly got outplayed and so forth. So we were competitive. But then we won three games by three points — we also could have lost. We're not saying what-ifs, we're just accepting what we've got and hopefully we can get better going into this next year.

Q: As you get older, do you find the offseason to be easier or harder than it's been in the past? You have more fun in the offseason than you used to?

A: This one will be a bit more intense. We think we've got to get our team playing faster, more physical. Spring practice may be a little bit more … sense of urgency, that's what the newspaper wrote. Maybe a bit more sense of urgency than maybe last year. We were No. 4 in the country, the highest ranking in school history, coming off our third straight 11-win season. The SEC media guys picked us to win the East (Division) and yet when they picked the preseason all-conference team we had one defensive player make the third-team all-defense. We had a couple on offense make second-team, I think.

So we didn't have a lot of star players but for some reason, everybody just assumed we were going to win six or so conference games and 10 or 11 regular games. But it didn't work out that way.

Q: Part of it was what you'd done during the previous few seasons, I think.

A: Well, I guess. We'd certainly won our share of the close games. We still won several close ones, but if you play a lot of them you're going to lose some.

Q: In terms of your own offseason, what do you have planned after the spring?

A: I have a lot of things I do every year. Trips, various number of trips we do and so forth. A couple summer camps. Our players are away the month of May, they're all away. And then June and July, they come back for summer school. We can actually meet a couple hours a week with them. Then we start back up in August when the players officially report. So yeah, I get a lot of away time.

Q: What are you going to do with yourself? Have you picked out where you're going to go?

A: I do a lot of the same trips. I usually go out to the Fiesta Bowl. My wife loves going out there. In early May or something like that.

Q: But you and your wife are not going to go to Paris or somewhere like that.

A: No, but we go to the Bahamas. I've got a friend that's got a boat and house down there. We've been doing that for about 17, 18 straight years now. It's like an annual trip. And then I keep getting invited to the Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament out there, the American Century Lake Tahoe tournament out there. So I'll play in that for about my 25th year this year.

Q: What's your best score at the Pro-Am? Do you remember?

A: Now they do the Stableford (scoring system). I shot 74 a couple of times. Last time was in 2008. The last 74 was in '08, because I kept the scorecard. I've not been that good the last couple years. But I have finished on the plus side. You get two points off for every double bogey. I have finished on the plus side every year. I hope to do better this year. I expect to play a lot better.

Q: Are you still able and have the time to do the exercise regimen you've been doing the last few years?

A: Oh yeah. Right after I talk to you I'm going over to do about an hour and a half in the weight room. Sometimes when you're traveling it's hard to work out five days a week, but I'm right here in the office. And during spring practice, I can always go in there an hour, hour and a half.

Q: What's your usual routine like?

A: I try to do cardio, which is the treadmill. I've got a right knee replacement. Treadmill, slight incline, put it on about 4.2, 4.3 (miles per hour), get a good sweat. Usually about 25 minutes of that. Maybe 15 minutes on the stationary bike. A whole bunch of sit-ups and some stretches and some light hand weights and so forth.

Q: So you're going for the conditioning rather than your heavy-duty free weights, that sort of thing.

A: Yeah, I don't do the heavy weights. That's for the athletes. I don't mess with that.

Q: Do you feel like you might have more energy now than you did a year ago because there's a desire to make sure that 7-6 doesn't happen again?

A: A little bit. I'd say a little bit. There's a little bit more intensity. During winter conditioning, I told the coaches, if we're in town we're going to go on a 6 a.m. run. Our guys ran Tuesday and Friday mornings. So I went to a whole bunch of those. When I was in town I went to all of them. I really didn't do that last year. Maybe the players know, hey, these coaches are hanging on us. Hopefully they know this is important. It's important stuff we're doing around here. We want to get back winning a lot better than 7-6 if we can.

Q: And you obviously think you can.

A: Yeah, I think we can. We believe we're going to get better, yes.

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