South Carolina Gamecocks vs. Kentucky Wildcats: Steve Spurrier Postgame Press Conference

After a rough home loss to Kentucky, the HBC answered questions about the status of Connor Mitch and what went wrong for the Gamecocks. The full press conference can be found here and the key quotes are below.

On why the Gamecocks lost:

That was a game of two halves. Unfortunately we didn't get enough touchdowns. Went down there and kicked a bunch of field goals, had some careless penalties.

We play these games all the time where one play determines the winner, you guys know. This week one or two plays didn't go our way.

On Knott's penalty in the red zone:

Alan said the guy was giving him some crap and he gave him a little shove..Yeah, Alan said the guy was giving him some crap, but inexcusable. That's inexcusable. You can't shove a guy, we know that, they don't let you do that. So that's the way it happened.

On the defense and halftime adjustments:

Proud of the way the defense played...wish we could've gotten one more stop to see what might could've happened, but it didn't work out that way.

Obviously the first half we weren't disguising worth a flip. We said here's our coverage, here's man to man, here's cover 2. I suggested and [Hoke] said yeah, we gotta disguise. I don't care what you play but you can't just sit there and tell them what you play...And the D-line played the second half. The D-line was all over the place the second half.

On the differences between the first and second half of the game:

It was a funny game...We couldn't stop them in the first half and we stopped them about every time in the second half. And I don't think we punted the second half, they didn't punt the first half. Strange game.

On Connor Mitch and whether he'll be back this season:

Too bad about Connor Mitch. I think he was diving for that ill-advised option play and separated his shoulder...so it looks like he's out.

I don't know, separated shoulder, that usually takes a year. But we'll wait and see. I'll let the doctors make that call. But it's very unfortunate.

On Perry Orth and who will start next week at Georgia:

But Perry came in a played pretty well... [He] made some beautiful throws.

Perry will probably be first in line. Lorenzo, we'll see what he can do. He was in there a couple of plays, but maybe we should've had him in a few more looking back, knowing we could've done this that or the other. But yeah, Perry would be the starter.

On what kind of team the Gamecocks are and what they need to do going forward:

Well the second half we did a lot of good things on defense, we moved the ball pretty much offensively. We just couldn't score down there.

They got more points than we did and we've got to figure out how to score touchdowns instead of getting field goals.