Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] On this episode of Cox Talking Gamecocks, I am your host, Tim Cox, where I will keep every episode from 18 one to 2001. And what a weekend, y'all. A winning weekend indeed. It is great to be a Gamecock. Gamecock Nation is just alive right now. The vibes are so high. I absolutely love it. I mean, you're looking left, you're looking right, you're looking center. You got wins, wins, wins. It's like triple sevens all the way around. It's so fun. It is such an amazing time right now to be a Gamecock fan. The vibes are high. Gamecock Twitter is a positive for a couple of weeks going now, and there's just not much else you can say. It is just a fantastic time to be able to sit back, watch some games, enjoy good teams performing at a high level. All the while you got day after day, creeping closer to baseball, opening day, which is always a fun day and a big season for us Gamecocks. It's just great to be a Gamecock right now. It really, really is. I hope you all had a lovely weekend out there, aside from sports and whatnot. Hope you're able to sit back, relax, kick it and whatnot. But yeah, the vibes are high. We are a basketball school right now. Nation's best. Nation's best record combined, men's and women's. It is very, very special. Like I said at last episode, enjoy it because this does not happen often. And you look around college sports and there are these schools that traditionally have been very great at basketball and things like that, and they don't even have the record that we can boast. So it's very fun and it's special. So I'm going to dive into both the men's and women's games from this weekend here. But first, let's do a quick weekend recap. It's a little tongue twister for you. And starting with the football team, you had special teams coach, the new hire, Joe Di Camillas. He was officially know. Shane Beamer held a press conference, as is customary for a new coach. And then D Camillas spoke as well. And you can just tell the respect that Shane and Joe have for one another. I think coming from that background of special teams, they can speak some of the same language. But Beamer shared a really cool anecdote where I'm probably going to butcher some of the details, but essentially, when Joe Di Camillas was sort of up and coming in the NFL and he was coaching for the Falcons, Frank Beamer, while he was still at Virginia Tech actually had D. Camillas come and speak to the guys, little coaches clinic and things like that. And so it just shows that the respect and the knowledge sharing from D. Camillus to even Frank Beamer was there. And you got to be pretty special and smart to get the invite to talk about special teams when it comes to Frank Beamer. Led team know Joe, despite being in the NFL for the vast majority of his career, said that he really has gotten an appreciation for the college game after being at Texas, his last stop for about the last year or so, but talked more so about how special teams can have more of an immediate impact in the college game and you can get to cover more kicks and you have more opportunities to change a game. And it's also cool because he talked about how you can have the best players on special teams. I mean, you think of a guy like Xavier Leguette, he was a special teamer and he was the best player on the field last year next to Spencer. Right. And in the pros, the guys who play special teams are not going to be starters because they are much more valuable to the organization and things like that. So talked about how that's exciting and he really grew to like developing young men, student athletes and things like that. And the one question mark about him is how is he going to be able to recruit? And Shane Beamer said it's all about being able to build relationships and if you can do that as a know person, just in general, that that should come naturally. He talked about Sterling Lucas, how he did not recruit before coming to South Carolina, and he's been one of our best recruiters. So exciting to see. Jody Camillas, I don't think there's going to be really much of a drop off from Pete Lembo to him. I think this is the guy for the job and it's going to be exciting to see if there's any differences that we see. I know we're going to miss Lembo's press conference and movie quotes and nicknames and all that jazz, but I think DeCamillis is going to be a great addition for this staff here. But now, looking at some scores here Friday, men's tennis unfortunately lost to NC State. That's all right, guys. Screw the wolf pack. Women's tennis beat Georgia Tech four to three. Track and field was also in action. There's obviously lots of results and things like that from those meets. But Nick harbor was in action and he ran a 60 meters in 6.67 seconds. And if you have the chance go onto their twitter account, find the video. It is something. He is an enormous human being. You don't have to look twice and find him because he is just the biggest one on the track. And then he's one of the fastest ones, too. So crazy to see how fast he is. And he's only going to get faster. He's just a freshman. Shane Beamer was actually even there to watch him, so that was pretty cool. But yeah, it was nice to see him in action in a sport that he loves.
[00:06:50] Saturday you had equestrian, beat Auburn eleven to nine. And also on Saturday, women's golf beat Oregon three to two and also beat Arizona three to two. So big weekend for women's golf. And then it kept going on Sunday when women's golf beat the number one ranked Georgia Tech yellow jacket. So that's super exciting. Shout out to the women's golf team. Huge weekend for them. Beating the top ranked team. They lit up capstone for them. You absolutely love to see that. Women's golf school, too. Just. That's what I'm saying. Like, what a weekend. And you really look around and you're just like, our sports are kind of kicking ass right now, so you don't have to be in one of these major programs to get some love because you are all contributing to South Carolina's success here. But now looking over at one of those major sports here, talking men's basketball, y'all already know the Q zips were in action on the road Saturday afternoon against Georgia in what increasingly felt like a revenge. You know, you had the Miles studie injury last time, dirty play. They kind of felt like Georgia stole one from us on our home court. So you didn't want to get swept. You wanted to sort of even the ods going to their place and getting that revenge. And the guys certainly did do that. Beating Georgia 72 to 62. UGA came out of the gate hot. I mean, it was like playing the freaking warriors. Like they were hitting a lot of three pointers. That frickin guy, Blue Kane or whatever the hell his name was. Like he was on fire. They were getting good looks. South Carolina took a little bit to settle down, but the guys ended the first half strong.
[00:08:38] Went into the half down just two. And then in the second half, you saw Lamont Paris and this Gamecocks team at work. Josh Gray was on fire. Game of his life. There was the Josh Gray game in the post. Colin Murray Boyles also looked really sharp. And going into this game, I talked about how the first matchup, it was the post play was the difference. And Georgia was more physical and they were able to get more production from their bigs. This time you saw Josh Gray, CMB Mack, they had a fantastic game. And then Michi and Talon, they started to hit their shots. Michi especially hitting some of those deep threes. And then the defense just wore down Georgia and the Bulldogs had stretches, long stretches in the second half. They just looked out of sorts. They were know, I think it was like seven minutes without a field goal or something like that. Lamont even broke out a zone in the second half that Georgia could just not figure out for the life of them. And then the guys were just playing good basketball. The Gamecocks recorded 29 assists on 25 field goals. So it just goes to show you that the guys were distributing the ball.
[00:09:59] They were being patient on offense and playing team basketball. And that's what this team has done. They are a very unselfish group of guys where it doesn't have to be one person beating a team. And I've talked about this at length where that's what this team is so dangerous. But there's not one guy who's trying to chuck up a bunch of shots and get his.
[00:10:25] Yeah, Michi was working through a slump and things like that, but he wasn't being selfish. He even talked about how when you're not hitting the shots, what else you can do to impact the game. Rebounding, assists, things of that nature. Talon Cooper is incredible and he has gotten better and better as this year has gone on. He came into this program, he was going to be a solid point guard for us. I don't remember exactly his stats, but his scoring I think has really exceeded pretty much everyone's expectations. Right. I thought he was going to be more of a facilitator, would score a handful of points here and there would be a good player for us. His offense has exploded especially, I feel like since we've entered league play. And once again you saw the guys weather some storms and they never panicked. That first half was not pretty for a lot of it, but the guys stuck with it. They battled and then they ended up with some momentum going into the half down just two. And then they were able to battle and get the lead pretty early in the second half and then they were able to fight off a lot of runs by Georgia. And just this adversity that they were able to overcome and the coaching and the direction of Lamont Paris, it just simply can't be talked about enough. I mean he is putting on an amazing showing as a head coach mean. And you saw the guys also protect the ball, only recording nine turnovers to record this fifth win in a row. So you're looking at a lot of passing, minimal mistakes. I think the guys maybe had ten fouls, like ten team fouls or something like that. Like minimal fouls. That is a Lamont Paris brand of basketball. And you look at his resume and where he came from. Bo Ryan at Wisconsin, that's what those teams did when they had those great runs and just forever Wisconsin basketball has been solid. It was a team that just didn't make mistakes, that didn't allow you to get back into the game. They just played their game. They did not allow the other team to get momentum and they just played good, strong, fundamental basketball. And that's what you're starting to see Lamont really impose in the SEC through this South Carolina program. It's just really cool to see player highlights here. Colin Murray Boyles, 16 points and five rebounds. Josh Gray 15 points and eight rebounds. That is a monster game.
[00:13:05] He talked about wanting to turn it on basically for the SEC was a month or so ago entering league play, he said he was going to turn it on. He was going to unleash the beast, so to speak. Right? And I mean, he has and he's far from a perfect product, right? There are definitely aspects of his game and there are times when you kind of scratch your head and you're like, come on, you can do a little better than that. But in this game, 15 and eight, and there were a couple of times where he probably could have had close to 20 points. Right.
[00:13:39] If you can get consistent production out of him, it is a real difference maker for this team. BJ Mack, we know what he can do and he also likes to stretch the floor a little bit and shoot the three. Colin Murray Boyles, he's getting better and better and better, but he is a freshman. Josh Gray is the guy who, if you can get quality minutes out of him and a stat line comparable to this regularly, that's what you need. And it's fantastic to see Michi Johnson went for eleven points. He looked good and it was nice to see him hit some deep shots again and really see that stroke again.
[00:14:15] Up next for the Gamecocks back at home Tuesday night for a whiteout game against Ole Miss. You remember they did blackout against Kentucky, the Tuesday night home game. We're going whiteout for this one. So even if you're not watching the game, wear white at home. I will be. And you know that Lamont's breaking out the white Qzip. Got the drip going. Going to be great. Time. Ole Miss is 18 and four overall, five and four in conference. Chris Beard will always bring good defense to his teams, and Ole Miss has seen some recent success the last couple of games in league play so far. And my crow to the game here is let's reproduce that post play that we saw last game against Georgia, because we know that we have the shooters on this team and this team wants to shoot the ball. But if you can win the battle in the post, you can find a lot of success in basketball, and then it really is the perfect complement for this team, and it also will allow BJ to continue to stretch the floor even more. So you're really looking at CMB and Gray to have a strong outing, and if that happens, that should bode well for this team. So Tuesday night whiteout, let's freaking go.
[00:15:41] And then moving on to the women's side of things here. The ladies were in action Sunday afternoon at home against Ole Miss, and I spoke about it going into the game.
[00:15:54] I was pretty intrigued by this matchup as Ole Miss has had success in the SEC this year. And they always play hard defense. They're a pretty well coached team. And in the early part of this game, a lot of that was true. Right. Things did not come easy for the Gamecocks in the first half especially. It was tough sledding. It just was. The deep shot was not falling whatsoever. And then you had both Cardozo and Watkins in early foul trouble. But Don navigated it well, and they talked about it on the telecast, and then you think about it as well. It was almost, uh. I don't know what the word is here. Like a use case, right. This was a good use case for what this team will need to do in the event it finds itself in a similar situation come March. Right. Because there are going to be moments where Cardozo or Watkins or someone else, key player, is in foul trouble early. So how do you navigate that? And dawn obviously sat Cardozo for a little bit, but in the first half, she put her out there because you got to learn how to play with the two fouls and you got to learn how to play smart and how does the team work around that? And I think it was a good example of how to do so. And you really saw it really work out kind of well. And then at the end of the first half, the Gamecocks had a flurry of offense, which really served to spark the team for the second half and that's exactly what you saw. Cardozo erupted on the offensive side and pow, pow. And Brie hall shots were falling. You saw more of that Gamecocks brand of basketball winning rebounds causing turnovers, cashing in on the offensive side. Player highlights. You had Camilla Cardoza go for 17 points, the majority of which was in the second half with the foul trouble to boot. Malaysia full Wiley 14 points. Really cool to see they put full Wiley's numbers against some of the other star freshmen in college women's basketball and she was right on par and was doing that from coming off the bench, whereas the other players were all starting. So full Wiley is just as efficient and just as productive with less minutes. So pretty cool to see. And then Ashton Watkins, nice double double here. Eleven points and ten rebounds. Up next for the Gamecocks is a game Thursday night against Missouri. Missou is 1111 overall and just two and seven in conference. They stink crow to the game. Here is start fast. We've seen this a couple of times, more than a couple of times this year in the SEC play where this Carolina team just, it takes a quarter or two even to really get going. You gotta start fast here. Let's get this lead up big early. Let's go into the half big and then let some of the other bench players close things out in the second half for this game. But with that, that wraps up this episode. Y'all 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 so subscribe and review the podcast. I appreciate all y'all go Cox.
