Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] On this episode of Cox Talking Gamecocks, both basketball teams add to their roster. The football team lands a recruit, and the baseball team looks to bounce back on the road. Okay, here we go.
[00:00:55] Okay.
[00:00:57] Welcome to episode 387 of Cox Talking Gamecocks. I am your host, host Tim Cox, where I will keep every episode from 1801 to 2001. Hope y' all had a great week. Gamecox finally got a little bit of rain here in the Southeast, so it's been very interesting dry few months. I feel like there's a lot of weather talk around nowadays, like just especially, you know, like especially talking drought and stuff. And I feel like. I feel like there's like a weird disproportion of episodes where I start talking about the weather. Just making small talk to the wall that I'm looking at as I talk to y' all as well. But happy May moving along here. Lovely month, lovely weather, Just baseball all around. Just good times.
[00:01:46] Absolutely love to see it. Hope y' all are ready for a good weekend. Ready to take in all the sports. You got professional playoffs going, MLB's in full swing.
[00:01:57] Winding down in college baseball and softball, and just a lot to be excited about all around. Of course, there's a lot of weird news going around about college athletics, but interesting news you have the guy. I don't know if it's a leak or not, but just saying that the time and age based eligibility rules is gaining a lot of momentum. I don't really know the ins and outs about it, but I think it's like, you know, you're 19 or you graduate high school and you have five years to play college athletics. So in a perfect world, it helps eliminate a lot of the congestion that we've been seeing where you guys are in college, playing, it's their seventh or eighth year, et cetera. And, you know, I think that's fine. And I'm sure there's going to be exceptions for medical reasons and whatnot, but I think it's just clarity. Like, that's just something that is lacking in college football right now is just what exactly are we doing? Like, what are the rules? And that would. That would be nice. You also got the NCAA tournament doing the thing that we knew they would do but that nobody wants, and that's expanding March Madness. I don't know if that's officially official, but all the reports seem like that that is going to happen. And it's just crazy to me. Nobody asked for this. Like, we've said it a thousand Times the people who are running college athletics don't like college athletics. March Madness was perfect as it was, and they added a couple more teams and it was like, okay, we'll give you that. Sometimes you get a team like a Texas this past year that plays their way in and. And then goes on a little run, like, okay, but, you know, now it's. I think I saw that you're going to have all of the 16 seeds having to, like, basically do a play in game, which, you know, that takes away the.
[00:03:50] The emphasis on trying to get there. I don't know. Nonetheless, that's, that's.
[00:03:55] That's my national podcast here. Right. But let's focus on South Carolina here. Got a few things to go over with y' all here.
[00:04:04] Going back to Tuesday, softball got the win over S.C.
[00:04:09] state, which was really nice to see. You know, coach, Coach Chastain Woodward had a very nice quote where she talked about, you know, the team coming together, where it didn't always come easy for them this year in the sec and they didn't let it bring them down, and they stuck together and they've hung in there, right. Like, I don't think the league record is certainly where they'd like it to be, but the overall record is there. They've crept back into the top 25. You know, you beat SC State 9 to.
[00:04:42] On Tuesday, and then you're going into this weekend against Alabama to close out your regular season. And if you can win that series, granted it's on the road, well, then maybe you get a favorable, a more favorable seed, obviously, in the SEC tournament, and then you see how that shakes out. And, you know, we can talk postseason softball here. So I do commend that whole coaching staff. I commend that team. And as it wasn't as easy as it was last year, you know, and the results weren't quite there, but. But they stuck it out and are in a position to end the season strong.
[00:05:25] Got some other news from this weekend here. Talking basketball. Both basketball teams here, making. Making some splashes here, starting with the women's team here. Picking up a international recruit. Don Staley announced that Joe, Justine, Lubinz. Lubin from France, will be joining the Gamecocks next season with four years of eligibility. So all of a sudden, the Gamecocks have gotten an influx of French talent with tournaments. And now Lubinz Les Gamecock allergamecock. I mean, really neat to see. I think the exciting part of Justine here, excuse me, is her shooting ability.
[00:06:05] She is a really good three ball. And that was something that they are excited to bring to the sec. And of course, you can hope that the rest of her game develops as well. But also, I think there's going to be a little bit of comfort, maybe is the word, when you talk about tornabies. I mean, she came into this past season.
[00:06:25] I mean, talk about like baptism by fire, right? Like, comes in during SEC play, new country, new culture, trying to get her feet underneath, her different style of play, everything like that. And you saw flashes. And when you look at articles and previews for women's college basketball next year, her name gets brought up.
[00:06:47] But it's got to be nice to have someone from your country joining the team. If nothing else, you don't have to be best friends. If nothing else, you can talk about some stuff that you miss from France. You can talk about the cheese and the bread and the wine, all that. All that good stuff. And you get to talk French to each other. So pretty cool to see international influx of talent. And then on the men's side of things, continuing to add through the portal here, I got a couple of names to discuss. One was a while ago that I apologize that I missed, and that is Wisconsin big man Alexis Bielakaskas.
[00:07:25] Feel like we're talking a Frank Martin team here because Alexis is originally from Lithuania, coming over from Wisconsin, who will begin his second year playing bass college basketball. Excuse me for the Gamecocks here. He's A big man, 6 foot 10. He averaged just about 5 points, 4 rebounds last year. He was a freshman.
[00:07:46] So again, it's, you know, the production, looking at it from last season maybe isn't jumping off the page. You're not jumping up and down and saying, this was a fantastic get from the portal.
[00:07:59] I will say, at least Lamont Paris is addressing the big man need. And so you get that there. And then you also address that with the second pickup that we're going to talk about here, and that is Jacob Nekkas. Nekha, also, I think an international player from Duquesne who is coming in with one year of eligibility left, also standing at 6 foot 10. He was a starter last year at Duquesne, averaged 7 points and 5 rebounds a game. So a little bit more production there, an older player could be good for the development of the Wisconsin big that we're bringing in. And, you know, that was an area that was pretty clearly a need for the Gamecocks going into this one. And. And I'm excited to see it. You know, I mean, at least Lamont Paris is Addressing a need. But you could make an argument that the type of players Lamont has brought in is kind of similar to what he did this past season, where it's guys who have decent numbers but they can shoot. They, you know, you can, you can make an argument the roster is being similarly built to this past year. I think there's maybe more clearly defined roles right now on paper, and I'm hoping that they gel better than they did last year. But I got to believe that with some of the other additions to the basketball staff, both on the bench and, you know, analytically, that some of this more is being taken into account and we'll see how it goes. But yeah, welcome home to a few new Gamecocks getting ready to play on the hardwood here and then welcome home. We're talking football here, talking football, recruiting. You know, y' all know I don't always get into the weeds with this stuff when it comes to, you know, top fives, official visits and things like that. It's a slower time of year. We're talking commitments here. As South Carolina picked up four star defensive lineman from the 2027 class. So yeah, I guess technically that is the next graduating class here. D lineman John Archer from North Carolina, sitting at 6 foot 4, 315 pounds, he's in high school, like literally built different.
[00:10:27] Archer chose Carolina over Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Georgia and others.
[00:10:33] He is ranked as the number 10 defensive lineman and he's tabbed as the number five prospect. So in North Carolina. So very nice pickup there. You like to see in the SEC it is won and loss oftentimes in the trenches and always love to see continuing to fill that because the D line, interior defensive line this season is decently deep. But it's experience, it's old. You talking about a guy like Pikes and Brownlow, Dendy. So you're going to need to start to considering, you know, backfilling that position. So really nice pickup there. And I saw this clip circulating on social media here. This is a little bit of a side tangent here, but Josh Pate, I like Josh Pate. Pate State. You know, he's. I like Pate because he tends to gas everybody up. He's not too critical of too many programs, but a clip was circulating around saying, how would you grade Shane Beamer essentially to this point, his Gamecock tenure and spoiler alert, I actually agreed with the professionals take on this thing. Pate gave Beamer a C plus.
[00:11:48] So what do y' all think? Is that too low? Is it too high?
[00:11:52] I Think a C plus is actually fair. I think if Beamer had scrounged together a bowl game last season, found a way to six wins, I think he might be at a B minus, you know, but sitting at a C plus, you think about it, right? If you have one more bad grade on a test, that's going to kill your gpa and meaning, you know, Beamer's fired, you know, if you win four games again this year, he's gone.
[00:12:23] But if you have a really good grade on the test, sitting at the C plus, your average goes into the B's. You're at a B or maybe even a B plus. So if Beamer goes eight wins, nine wins this upcoming season, I think you're happy with it. I think, to me, what's C plus worthy? Like, you know, being on that edge is just the consistency that, yeah, two years ago you won nine, then this year you.
[00:12:52] You had four. And it's clear that there were some bad hires along the way. There's been some questionable hires throughout the tenure. There's been some down years. It's just this up and down that we get with Beemer. And that's what I think is driving us fans a little bit crazy with it, because you see the potential there. You're passing, you're at a C plus, but one more wrong step and it's really not good. But you can have a good step and you're feeling a lot better. So I think it was fair and I don't know. Let me know what you all think. Shoot me up on social media, talk amongst this, talk about this amongst your friends. I think it's a pretty fair take. Again, I think to me, it's just the consistency with Beamer, and I've talked about it before, but I think this past cycle with hiring Briles, bringing in Coach Clamley, that's Briles guy, Stan Drayton. Right. There's different types of hires. Like, I think it's a better staff than we've had. And I think maybe in the past, early in his tenure, Beamer thought, like, he could maybe white knuckle this thing and have a good culture and, you know, lead some good recruiting. And we can overcome, you know, a Coach Blackwell, right? Like just an ineffective coach here. We can overcome a Lonnie Teasley. We can overcome, you know, almost a Don Shula, like Mike Shula, like, so. But now I think he's saying, all right, I gotta have guys here who can really handle their business.
[00:14:33] And we'll see. But, yeah, just Saw that going on. And interesting discourse, right? That's perfect spring discourse for you.
[00:14:43] But. All right, let's shift gears before we get out of here and talk baseball. Talking yardcocks here. The team was in action Tuesday night at home against the Citadel and lost four to nothing, being shut out. And that is a sweep by the Citadel in this. They, you know, this year, losing twice, the Citadel is South Carolina. And I think I saw that that's the first time since the 90s that that happened. So, yeah, really, really not good. And I know there's been some more positive results lately. You know, you. You had a couple of SEC wins, you had a couple of series wins, and the vibes were. The vibes have certainly been better under Monty Lee than they were under Mineri.
[00:15:34] But I think there's still plenty of proof in the pudding out there that, like, we need a complete rebuild, like, we need an entirely new staff. You know, you gotta bring a whole new core of guys in from the portal and recruiting and otherwise, it's just tough. Right? Like, this team is doing their best. And I've said it before, I commend everyone in this program for sticking it out and doing what they can, but that's a tough one. You know, and it's tough because last weekend the guys hosted Kentucky, end of a really big home stand, and they won the series. So it's, you know, you've had these glimpses where, you know, you swept Missouri and then, you know, tough one against Mississippi State. But then you took two out of three against Kentucky, you lost the third one, but you won your series at home, you handled business. And, you know, you're seeing South Carolina beating the teams that they should be, which is a low bar, but you certainly will take it. And so, yeah, coming off the heels of a series win to lose the Citadel is tough, right? But nonetheless, like, I still credit to those guys for getting that series win against Kentucky. But the guys will look to bounce back this weekend as they take the road and go to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to take on lsu. Was shocked to see where LSU is in the SEC standings and shocked to see that they are below South Carolina sitting at 6 and 15 in league play. Now, their overall record is better than South Carolina, sitting at 25, 21 compared to 22 and 24. So they do have a winning record overall, but have also struggled mightily in the midweek. And yeah, I mean, goes to show how in tune I am with the rest of the sec, because I saw we were playing LSU and I was like, oh, that's going to be an uphill battle. Probably a top 10 team only to then see that no bottom team. So, hey, going off of this theme, SC playing better against competition in our realm of the SEC, if you will, where you won a series against Kentucky, that's the team sitting right above you. You swept Missouri. That's the team at the bottom. Well, hey, how do you handle lsu? This should be a competitive series and a series that if you can go, if you can go down to Louisiana and you can get a series win, that's still a great weekend. I like, I don't care what their record is. And it's crazy to say because, you know, the end of the season is really coming into view here. The guys have just two more SEC series and then that's it until the SEC tournament. Pretty crazy to say. It's been a. It's been a journey. We'll talk more about that later, but let's root them in this weekend. A lot of action going on across game Catholic Gamecock Athletics. This wraps up this episode. Please follow me on social media, Twitter or X is Cox Gamecocks. Instagram is just the name of the show. Cox Talking Gamecocks. And please, like subscribe and review the podcast. I appreciate all y'. All Go Cox.
