Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] On this episode of Cox Talking Gamecocks, reaction as the football team gets a huge win in the swamp and a weekend recap from around Carolina Athletics. Okay, here we go.
[00:00:54] Okay.
[00:00:56] Welcome to episode 413 of Cox Talking Gamecocks. I am your host, Tim Cox, where I will keep every episode from 1801 to 2001. And how does that feel, Gamecocks? Whoa.
[00:01:11] You feel that sigh of relief? You feel that weight off of your shoulders? I. I feel like Ricky Bobby. I don't know. I don't know what to do with my hands just sitting here after a big Carolina football victory. It just feels. It feels fantastic. And I know that around Gamecock Nation, there is a general just sense of relief and elation and just happiness.
[00:01:37] You know, Shane Beamer said it in his postgame press conference that he just is happy for the players. He's happy for his coaches and the staff and the fans. And I think that that's just what it is. Like, I. I personally have that sense of relief, but it's just a great feeling now. And I was kidding around saying, like, it's not the long national nightmare that is over, it's the long Gamecock national nightmare that is over. As the terrible losing streak that we had been on against power competition, against SEC competition, it's over.
[00:02:11] Gamecock's picking up a huge, huge win in the Swamp, a place that has really been a tough place to play for South Carolina. I think I saw. It's like this is like the third win at Florida or something like. Something like that. And it's a team that has. It's been a good series back and forth, but we bought. We've been on the wrong end of it.
[00:02:31] And South Carolina goes down there, backs against the wall. Coach in backed into a corner and really, like, belt to ass to Florida here. And yeah, Florida, you know, going into this one ranked 16th. So sneakily, like, you look up in this game, you're like, wow, like, not only is this an SEC road win, like, this is a top 20 win now do I think Florida maybe was overvalued after the start that they had. Maybe. You know, I think now they're coming. Coming down to that mean of where they probably are after the huge win against Ole Miss. And now they've been exposed a little bit against Missouri and now South Carolina, but nonetheless, that's still a team that has some. Some good talent. And I think John Sumrall is a good coach. And you're on the road in a hostile environment, and you go down There and convincingly respond. And that's the word that I just kept coming back to throughout this game. Just a response. This was a team response. I mean, the offense has done pretty well to this point, but you struggled in second halves. The defense has been struggling since Mississippi State, right?
[00:03:50] And you have the head coach that's coming under fire. Players are coming under fire. All three phases of the team responded in this one, with the exception of getting a punt blocked. But all three phases responded incredibly well.
[00:04:04] And in the game itself, the Gamecocks were responding, which was exactly what we knew they could do, but hadn't. To this point in the year, where previously, before this game, in SEC play, it felt like anytime there was a little bit of adversity, it really just hit the sideline hard.
[00:04:27] In this one, Florida jumps up seven nothing. You respond, Florida takes the lead especially. And after South Carolina missed a field goal, you respond and tie the game.
[00:04:40] You go up in the half, right? You deal with the weather delay, which when that happened, I thought, advantage Florida. I thought, you know what? We have a little momentum on our side now. That's zapped. Here we go again.
[00:04:53] Florida comes out, defense stands tall, and you hold them to a field goal. Sneaky.
[00:04:59] And then how do you respond? You go down, you get a touchdown. And that moment, to me, it felt a little different where it said, okay, after the delay, after Florida getting points right away, you get that touchdown and you go up 11 points, and then defense stands tall, and then Lenoris Superman down there gets almost a touchdown, but then pushes in for that touchdown. You're up 31, 13 going into the fourth. And in that moment, it was, wait a second here, like, are we pulling away in this game? Because it was. It was a close game, a back and forth game, right? Both teams had some mistakes, both teams made some plays, and it was South Carolina that when it mattered more later in the game, as that game went on, they just hit a groove. Like, offense was just in a freaking groove Saturday.
[00:05:52] Shout out to Kendall, browse on this one. Shout out to Lenoris, who was balling like, that's the Lenora that we love. Like a couple of throws he would love to have have back. Absolutely.
[00:06:02] He's always had those couple of throws, right?
[00:06:06] One or two times when he was running earlier in the game, I was like, he could have cut up and got some more, but he was in the zone. He ran hard, he shook off tacklers. And then I think it was the. The pass. It was Tamazio, the touchdown. That was a freaking fastball in a tight window with confidence. The type of throw that I've been begging to see from Lenoris and he did.
[00:06:30] And then that the. The freaking passion or arguing or just hype, whatever you want to call between him and Mao, like those guys are going after it, but you're seeing that they're not being complacent, you know, like they scored and there was still some jawing, right. And it was just trying to push each other, I think, is what that was.
[00:06:52] Had a great touch on the ball to open it to with Nick Shout out. Nick harbor, you know. Yeah, he had. He did have a bad drop. There were a couple drops that you want to take back, right. You have to clean that up. But for the most part, it was a good day from the wide receivers.
[00:07:07] You saw Murph back in action, scoring again. We want. Loved seeing him back in the mix. Lex Cyrus, a good young player, talked about him really before the season started as someone who could step up in the absence of Jaden Sellers.
[00:07:23] They just performed incredibly well on the offensive side of the ball. Matt Fuller ran hard.
[00:07:29] Not the biggest day numbers wise for him, but he got hard yards when it mattered.
[00:07:36] Just a. Just a great game plan by Briles. A couple of calls that I didn't love, but stayed aggressive. And that touchdown to really nail in the coffin at the end to Lex Cyrus, he was wide open because I apparently like the Florida defense was just like, okay, South Carolina is going to try and run to get the first down or make it a little bit of an easier field goal here.
[00:08:03] Kendall stays aggressive and then Lenoris found Lex for the wide open touchdown. So a really complete day on the side of the offense. And Lenores looking at the Kentucky game and looking at this game seems to have found another gear. And I think maybe realizing that he did need to step up his game and maybe realizing that he can be the spark that takes this offense to the next level and maybe just trusting the system more. And you hear these things throughout the week at press conferences where, you know, saying like, he just has to trust his receivers and he has to just understand that the receiver's job is to catch the ball. You can't make them do that. And I think that he's trusting it more and more. And yes, the result at the end was not there against Kentucky, but offensively he played better and the team did well. Florida, you go down there, the whole team does well. But then we have to shout out the defense in this one, you held Florida to 19 points and really that Last touchdown was complete garbage time.
[00:09:12] You generated turnovers finally. And they talk about when the turnover start, they come in bunches, and they certainly did in this one. And that was an absolute backbreaker for Florida. But you have to give credit where credit's due. I've been critical of this coaching staff just like everyone else has.
[00:09:28] You absolutely have to give Clayton White his flowers for this game. If you looked at the injury report going into this one, and I alluded to it in the pregame episode, it was not pretty. On the defensive side of the ball, Julian Walker was out. You had Gabe Brown, Lodendi out. The guys were banged up going into this one. You lose Judge Collier in the, in the first quarter, there seemed to be a concussion.
[00:09:53] This team still responded down contributors. The pass rush looked solid. You saw Troy Pikes getting in the mix. Stewie right on cue, coming back after the suspension, playing like a man, playing like that top five draft pick that we all know he is. He's a game wrecker. He absolutely changes the dynamics of games when he is in. And he seemed to be in the zone from the start. But I loved what we saw from the D tackles throughout the game. And then in the backfield, obviously you're creating the interceptions, you're generating that, those turnovers and that pressure. But I think some of the pressure that you saw the Florida quarterback under was because the defensive backfield was so sound and they did not have these terribly bad blown assignments. Yeah, there, there are a couple of plays where Florida had to catch and run for sure.
[00:10:48] There's certainly things to clean up, but keeping them out of the end zone for two whole quarters. And again, that fourth, fourth quarter was, you know, a garbage time play, I think is incredibly, incredibly great because that is just a response. Again, a response from a unit that had just been gashed up to this point in the year.
[00:11:15] So it's a testament to this entire team. And you know what? We have to talk about Shane Beamer. I have been on here calling for his head call, calling for his job, and so many people were. It seemed like this program had maybe lost its way. He just, he just saved his job certainly for the rest of the season. I think if there was going to be a time, it would have been in the bye week. You make a change and you see what you can get for the next six games. Well, now you have a ranked win on the road, a convincing win. Right. If this was a squeaker, you, you could still have your doubts about what this team is.
[00:11:52] He finally got it out of his team to play to their potential.
[00:11:58] We could go down a rabbit hole about why it took to this point, whatever.
[00:12:02] We got that great South Carolina team that we know that we had right with this roster.
[00:12:09] And I think the players like playing for Shane Beamer. I don't think that that's ever been in question. And I think they rallied to him.
[00:12:17] And I really appreciated during the game. They asked Beamer at halftime, like, you know, the typical questions about, what are you seeing so far in this game? A lot of times, Beamer has been like, rah, rah, us against the world, like we expected to be in this position. We're a good football team, yada, yada, yada. Going into the half talking in that interview, he basically said, like, we're playing well, but we're not playing well enough. There's still a lot of football to be played. We haven't finished games well this year. We need to go play for four quarters. That was a completely different tone than we have heard from him really, ever.
[00:12:59] And I think he came into this game more focused and just more dialed in. And I think at the halftime, that's what the mood was. I mean, and you saw the clips coming out from social media, like, in the locker room during that delay, like, the guys, like, rallying and hyping themselves up and understanding that there's still a fight at hand and how they came out of that half is incredible. And to me, like, it was lessons learned from what we have seen through those first couple of SEC games. And so you have to absolutely give Shane Beamer credit because he kept the team together in this last week where it would have been really easy for this team to really just go off the rails here.
[00:13:49] He kept his coaches focused.
[00:13:51] He got the most out of Dylan Stewart. He handled that situation. Stewie came out first off the bus at the field, came out and played well.
[00:14:01] He's tapped into another gear of Lenoris, whether it's working with Kendall Briles and him or, you know, speaking directly to Lenores, he's gotten the most out of him, seemingly gotten more out of his defense and his defensive staff going into this one.
[00:14:21] And so, yeah, absolutely, I think Shane Beamer saves his job for the rest of this year and has made us fans believe in a little bit more, you know, and it's.
[00:14:36] It is a deal where, you know, we're very happy right now. And this is exactly what Beamer said in the. In the locker room. You're happy right now, but this is not the climax of the season. We're halfway through and we can look backwards and say, wow, we really should be 4 and 2 or better at this rate. But, hey, you are where you are. You are what your record says you are. We made some mistakes going into this one, but now you have an open date where guys need to get healthy. The aforementioned injury report. Guys need to get healthy. You need to continue to get better. You need to continue to work. Let's see some of those great practices.
[00:15:15] But then you have six more opportunities in the back half of the schedule, which all of a sudden looks a lot easier than it did at the start of the year to make some noise.
[00:15:27] And you can still yet salvage a pretty good season.
[00:15:32] But again, it's one thing at a time. Like, this was exactly what this team needed to do. It was a complete team effort for four quarters, playing complimentary football, and you get a huge win. Top 20 win on the road. Like, this is a notch in Shane Beamer's belt, right? This is. This is a big win. He has. He had struggled in the road earlier in his tenure. The team has struggled everywhere. The last year to go down into the swamp is a big one here with. With a team in Florida that, yeah, they. They got pushed around by Mizzou.
[00:16:04] I kind of thought that that would wake up Florida and they would correct some of those wrongs.
[00:16:11] We continue to expose some of those weaknesses with our ability to run with Lenoris and Matt Fuller, and then you attack him through the air incredibly efficiently. And it was just a great, great response. And, yeah, you're going to go into this open week, get healthy, get correct.
[00:16:26] I don't have the numbers in front of me. I feel like Beemers teams tend to do well after the buy. I feel like I've said that the last couple seasons, and then it's kind of been like, meh. But he has shown the ability to do that. And Beamers teams have always gotten better as the year progresses. It's a very strange phenomenon, but that's where we're at right now.
[00:16:50] Can you close out the month of October against Tennessee and Oklahoma? Well, and then see where you're at in November. And it's always.
[00:17:00] That's what they remember, Right? So kudos to this team, kudos to this staff. This is exactly what we want to do. Kudos to us. We. We stuck it out and this is why.
[00:17:10] Enjoy this win. This is a big one. We'll relax in the open week and then we'll get back to it. All right, but let me give y' all a weekend recap and then I will get y' all out of here. Just dove right in with football. Just couldn't wait. So Friday we have a lot of action here. Women's volleyball unfortunately took the l to Alabama 3 to 1. Equestrian also unfortunately lost to Auburn 14 to 5. Women's soccer with a big win, beating Tennessee 2 nothing.
[00:17:42] And baseball had a scrimmage schnallball kicking off already. They beat high point 15 to 2. Absolutely love to see that. And then on Saturday, men's soccer was in action and they beat Kentucky 1 nothing. So a pretty good weekend all around from around Gamecock Athletics.
[00:18:01] As a little bit of a teaser here, next episode I will have a special guest on doing an interview with a big J journalist. That's going to be a lot of fun, so stay tuned for that. But enjoy this one victory. Absolutely love it. But with that, y', all, that wraps up this episode. Please follow me on social media, Twitter or X is Cox Gamecox. 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.
