Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This episode of Cox talking gamecocks is brought to you by the Mason Jar, New York City. The Mason Jar is the official gamecock bar for the New York City area. Fans and alumni of USC can come by the jar for some great barbecue, cold drinks, and of course to watch the gamecocks in any sport, all while surrounded by South Carolina memorabilia. If you want to get a slice of game day in Columbia, all while in the Big Apple, head to The Mason Jar on east 30th street.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: All right, here we go.
Welcome to episode 192 of Cox talking gamecocks, brought to you by the Mason Jar, New York City. I am your host, Tim Cox, where I will keep every episode from 18 one to 2001 and hope you all had a lovely week out there. Happy Halloween. Hope you all got some candy or were generous handing out the candy. No snack size bars, regular to king size bars only and going all out for Halloween. I had three, four, maybe five Reese's, and that's a lot for me in one sitting. I think that's a lot for anybody in one sitting, but love me some candy, love me halloween, it's like a sneaky great holiday in my opinion. Gets dress up, get to act weird, the movies are great, scary little spooky season and well, I mean it's not like the gamecocks weren't scary enough in October, but nonetheless onto a new month. Happy November to you all. Got a packed episode for y'all here, so let me jump right in with a week in review from around South Carolina athletics here. Starting on Monday, with the men's golf team finishing fourth at the Daniel Island Intercollegiate. You would hope USC could do good when the tournament is right there on Daniel Island. And also Frankie Harris, he won the individuals first career win for Frank, they called him Frank the Tank on the team's account there. So congrats to Frankie Harris first win as an individual in the tournament. That is very exciting. Tuesday, women's soccer unfortunately lost to Texas A M. No shame in losing to A M. It's all right, there's a lot of that going around. Men's soccer, they lost to Marshall to nothing. And on Wednesday the men's basketball team, they held their final exhibition game of the season. They beat Wafford 60 to 57. Now, the story of this game is that the first half, the team just looked all out of sorts. All out of sorts. They were not looking good, not hitting shots, defense did not look crisp. They were down big at the half and then they rallied back and they were able to beat Wafford 60 to 57. Shots started to fall, they started to play with better defense, more cohesion, and that's grit. I know it's easy to say, well, it's just an exhibition game. Well, it would have been even easier for these guys. Down 15 plus at the half to say, well it is just an exhibition game, take my foot off the gas here. But no, this team rallied and if that is any indication of what is to come, at the very least this team is going to fight hard and find unique ways to score because you got to get a guy like Michi Johnson, Jacoby Wright, et cetera to hit their shots. But it is exciting that both the men's and women's team are starting their season. Monday basketball season is here, y'all, the women are very excitingly over in Paris to kick off their season, that is just so cool. I'm very jealous. And then the men kick off their season as well, monday against USC upstate, I believe it is. So it's here and if you followed me in seasons past, I'm going to follow the same pattern where of course I'm going to update you all on the scores, general themes for those games but the vast majority of time and effort in the episodes while it's football season will remain on football. We're in the home stretch here, there's only so many games left whereas we are just getting the tip of the iceberg here with men and women's basketball. So then once football season wraps up, we will dive into both basketball teams. Crows to the Game and all that jazz. In other news here, got a little bit of football news before we jump into the weekend preview. The kickoff time for Vanderbilt has been set, that is next Saturday at noon. So back to back noon games for the Gamecocks though hopefully if Carolina ends up on the right side of these next two games, hopefully it's a situation where you sort of pay your dues for the noon games and you can close out the season with some 04:00 p.m. Or later games. I think our fans would love that and going to get into a minute here but you might need every little inch of home field advantage you can get in those last two games.
But yeah, so staying on the topic of football here, the Gamecocks have officially closed the page on what was an October to forget and now they turn home where they will play the remainder of their season at home in Williams Bryce. Four games in a you know, we're sitting here and despite the season going very awry, I don't think there's many people at all who predicted we would be where we are.
It's still sad to say that we have entered the last month of college football. It sucks.
Even with having a tough record and having heartbreaking losses and all that jazz. It's not a situation where I'm like, all right, last month like, no, I'm sad. I love college football, I absolutely love it. Favorite thing in the world. But nonetheless the Gamecocks find themselves in a very unique scenario having those four games in a row, let alone to close out your year with four home games in a row. It's very rare and they are absolutely set up the right way if the team is ready to try and turn this thing around.
Because it's simple.
Win out, sweep the month of November, go six and six, and you make a ball game and you salvage the season with actually a little bit of momentum heading into the offseason. So the task is simple. The mission is clear.
And I've said it these last couple of weeks where I was trying not to look at the path ahead too much, but now as a fan, I just can't do that anymore, right? Like, of course you have to take it one game at a time, but the fact remains that there is still a clear path to six wins and you are home for all those games.
Might not be the easiest path in the world, right?
But nonetheless, it is there and you start off of these four games with two of the lesser opponents of the four back to back. So it's possible that South Carolina picks up some swagger, some confidence and some momentum to come down the very important final two games.
So it sets up well if you were to find yourself in a scenario like this, it kind of sets up how you would want it to be.
But let's look at the task at hand this Saturday. This is the game of the year. This is the Game of the Year, not just as it relates to South Carolina, but as it relates to the entire college football world because it is cockpocalypse or the cock NATO aka gamecocks versus Gamecocks as the South Carolina Gamecocks are taking on the Jacksonville State Gamecocks. I mean, I was super excited when this matchup was announced and bad record be damned, I'm excited for this game.
South Carolina is currently a 16 and a half point favorite, give or take a little bit, depending on where you look. This is an opportunity again for South Carolina to begin to right the ship a bit injury wise. Trey Jones is out and the others that are banged up are questionable. From what I've seen at least, that means leguette for Sean Lee Case and Henry working his way back. Maybe we'll see. Tree so on guys are still banged up, but from what I've heard, at least, no one is definitively out aside from Trey. Don't hold me to that though.
But what South Carolina can't do is overlook Jacksonville State as a gimme and take them lightly. I mean, first off, the team is two and six and you can't overlook anybody when you're two and six.
Secondly, Jacksonville State is good in their own right. They are coached by Rich Rodriguez, so he's got a lot of experience there. They're currently seven and two and are second in Conference USA. Defensively, they rank very well nationally, even not just Conference USA. In tackles for loss, Shane Beamer pointed out that this was a team that beat Florida State a couple years ago, if you remember that. And a good amount of those players that were on the team then are still, you know, then there's always this factor at play with the smaller schools that they'll come in and play with nothing to lose and have that chip on their shoulder. So no matter how you look at it, the gamecocks, the South Carolina gamecocks, that is, you need to come in ready to play.
So with that said, let me go to my Crows to the game here. Any new listeners? I don't do my keys to the game. Everyone does that. We have our rooster Crow, so I have my Crows to the game. Overall for the team. Play disciplined. Play disciplined. There have been too many instances this season where silly penalties have killed this team. Either keeping the other team on the field or taking us off, putting us in disadvantages position. That's whatever. You guys see what I mean? But you have to play disciplined, right? You can't take anything for granted in this game. You have to be sharp defense. My first Crow for the game here is come out with the same intensity that we saw last week.
Last week, this pass rush was more active than we had seen all year.
Guys just simply looked more physical than we have seen this year.
So whatever that was, whatever secret sauce they had, that intensity needs to be there not just for this game, but for the entire month of November.
My second crow here is sell out for the run.
I said before the A M game that this defense has to decide what they're trying to stop here and just sell out for that. And I said that they need to stack the box and just not give up the killer runs, and I think they need to do that again.
Jacksonville State, it's a really tricky defense. Like, they kind of have two quarterbacks that they'll rotate. They got their main guy. None of them have eye popping numbers. I mean, Spencer has over a hundred more attempts than their leading quarterback, but their quarterbacks can run, and they have a more than capable running back, which all of those things are signatures of Rich Rodriguez.
So to me, let's continue to stack the box and make it difficult to do what they like to do, which is run it on you and hope that our SEC caliber defensive backs can handle their own on islands this game.
My third quote of the game here for the defense is be ready for the tempo. Jacksonville State, they like to play fast, so if they start to move the chains, this defense has to be ready to adjust.
Luckily, we've played Tennessee, so you'd like to think that this team knows how to handle a little bit of tempo on the offensive side of the ball here. My first crow is continue to feed harbor. I mean, his progression, Nick Harbor, right, has been super exciting to watch. And he's really coming off his most productive game by far last week. He's a superior athlete to many SEC defenders, so you can just use his natural abilities to create some explosive plays. I mean, last week he's an arm tackle away from breaking a big one there. So continue to feed him. Let him get more and more comfortable. You're going to need him more and more down the stretch. But again, he's just naturally so gifted that, yes, I'm going to look down my nose here a little bit, like against the CUSA defender. Probably can overpower him.
Also, if Leguette is banged up, if you're able to feature Nick Moore and maybe let Leguette rest a little bit, rotate him out a little bit, that can only help. So continue to feed harbor. My second Crow here is convert in the red zone. This team cannot have drives stall out anymore once they get into that area of the field.
So let's see Dawa Loggins be aggressive, dial up some good play calls in this game, have his know, see it come to fruition. In basketball, you talk a lot about guys. Just need to see one go through the hoop.
I think if we get a couple of red zone conversions in this game, that can hopefully pay dividends not just in this game, but in the future ones, too. Down the line this month and then also my third Crow for the game.
You're going to need Spencer to lead you, right? I mean, Spencer has had a very good year.
He's had a couple of lesser games the last couple of weeks. Kind of in this weird trend with the team. But he balled out against Florida, made some silly mistakes against A M. We need to see that balling out, know those confident throws.
He knows what to do. Protect the ball. Be smart with it. Keep the chains moving. Put the balls in your playmaker's hands, right?
So overall for this game, I mean, it really is a clean slate this next month of November. It's its own season, essentially. And the best way to start a season is to go one and o.
And that has to be this team's objective going into this game.
Can't worry about what's going on in three weeks, four weeks next week.
And I know the coaches are saying that, but the fact of the matter is, from a fan's perspective, nothing is going to happen unless you win that next game. Right? Like, there's no margin forever. So you have to go one and O each week.
So you can't be complacent against this team because they're in a smaller conference. Our team simply has no room to be complacent, period.
South Carolina is facing a well coached team with some veteran players and they have to be ready for the challenge.
Now, if the team can go out and put together four good quarters of football and win this game with room to spare, then I think everyone in and around the program will regain a little bit of confidence. And I think right now that's what this team needs. They just need a spark and then they can get on a roll. And I think this game can be just that.
Probably not going to be a 30 point blowout, but if you win right around that spread, 16 points, 17 points, something along there, 14, you can feel good about that.
Give the fans something tangible to cheer about and then you got to take what you did well and double that down the next week and continue to improve.
This has a chance to be a november to remember.
But it all starts with this game and then if this goes well, then it all starts with the next game and the next game and the next game. So you're in a unique position where you feel okay about these next two games. The other two present on paper at least a harder challenge.
And on paper, this is the team from the smaller conference and all that jazz. This is kind of where you would want to start. We can argue about Vanderbilt or not, right? But point being, come out there focused for four quarters, kick some ass, get some swagger back, and let's see what we can do here.
Let's go.
All right. Now let me share with you my six pack of picks and then I will get y'all out of here. Starting with the ACC. Give me notre dame minus three versus Clemson, obvious. Give me big twelve. Kansas State versus Texas. I'm going under 49 and a half. Goes against every fighter of my body. Big twelve. I love those overs, but this one feels right. Big ten. Nebraska minus three versus michigan state. Nebraska having a decent season in their own right. Michigan state is just a disaster. Think nebraska takes that easily. Pac twelve. Cal versus oregon, over 59 and a half. Oregon has a good defense. They have had a few games where they've led up 2030 points. I think cal can kind of help out there. Oregon brings it over. SEC, big game here. A couple of big games in the SEC this week. Mizzou versus georgia. I'm going mizzou plus 15 and a half versus georgia. If this game was in, missouri might be tempted to take the tigers to win it. I think this game's going to be close to defensively inclined teams group of five. I'll take two lane -17 versus ECU but with that y'all that 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.
