South Carolina Gamecocks at Texas A&M: Shawn Elliott Postgame Press Conference

On how well Perry Orth played:

I think Perry played really well. You know the interception for the touchdown, oh man, if he could have that one throw back. Sometimes you get focused on that one individual and we had another wide open receiver right behind there that would've been a tale of two plays. Hit the guy behind him and it goes for 30 or 40 yards and it's just one of those misreads and he took a chance and a guy stepped in front of him and made a great play...But I thought Perry was very solid today.

On whether is Orth is the starter going forward:

I'm behind Perry Orth at this point. I think our team believes in him. You can't fault a guy that goes out there and plays and does what he did today. He certainly made a crucial mistake, but we all did. We made crucial mistakes in play calls, defensive play calls, you can't pinpoint the loss on Perry Orth. He was a bright spot. Perry's our guy right now.

On whether he was satisfied with the defense:

It was an improvement from a year ago, if you want to say that...You certainly aren't satisfied offensively or defensively when you lose a football game. I mean there's plays we could've both made.

On whether he's going to take a hand in coaching the defense:

I think we all sit in there and say what can we do to get better, but I'm certainly not taking over the [defense] by any means. But I mean, there's obviously things we can do both offensively and defensively to get better.

On losing a close game and the takeaways from Carolina's performance:

I think our team made improvements. They played with great, great effort, I don't question that. They needed to make a few more plays offensively.  The defense gave us some opportunities there at the end to take it down and win the game. And I'll tell you, we were gonna go for two for the win had we scored...Unfortunately it didn't work out for us...We just didn't get the job done...A loss is a loss, we understand that and we're very, very disappointed in what we didn't accomplish. But they need to understand that we improved as a group, as a team, as a staff and It's a process. I'm very disappointed. I thought we could've taken it today and we were really close, but close isn't good enough.

On what the Gamecocks will do now:

We gotta keep moving forward and making plans to better our football team.