The Gamecocks have hit the midway point of preseason camp and on Thursday, the two coordinators met with the media to discuss the progress of the offensive and defensive units.
Offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield said the addition of QB Zeb Noland to the playing roster wasn’t something that just happened in the wake of Luke Doty’s foot injury. “We were already talking about getting Zeb, making sure that if anything did happened and we did want to pull the trigger on this, he’d be ready to roll.”
Satterfield was also very honest in his response to a report that the Gamecock offense did not perform that well during this past Saturday’s scrimmage. “I would say other than the third down segment of the scrimmage, it was probably not one that we would like to revisit and live through again. It wasn’t great. I think it’s a bunch of guys coming off of finding out that Luke wasn’t there that day. But I’ve been on a lot of really good offenses that the first scrimmage of the fall they got their butts kicked by the defense and then they got to come back the second scrimmage and see if they can get a little bit better and that’s where we are right now.”
Defensive coordinator Clayton White says that creating turnovers has been a major emphasis in practice thus far. “It really starts with the head football coach, Coach Beamer. He kinda sets the tone”, White says. “He shows all the stats of the top fifteen teams in the country who led the country in turnovers, so our guys hear it a lot. Throughout the summer, we spent two days a week of doing turnover tackling, turnover drills.”
White went on to elaborate about the leaders on his side of the ball. “Aaron Sterling’s been a guy that people kinda forget about. Well, I don’t ’cause I see him every single day. He’s like the heart and soul of the front really. He’s taken every single rep. He’s got that old man about him. If I’m a teammate, I’m listening to him.”
Coach White also made it perfectly clear that he’s a huge NBA fan and is not interested about having the Jordan/LeBron debate in the meeting room with his players.
USC OC Marcus Satterfield
USC DC Clayton White
