Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] On this episode of Cox Talking Gamecocks, the football team has a new offensive coordinator and the 2025 schedule is released. And also men's and women's basketball prepares for a weekend matchup. Okay, here we.
[00:00:57] Okay. Welcome to episode 282 of Cox Talking Gamecocks. I am your host, Tim Cox, where I will keep every episode from 1801 to 2001. Hope y'all are doing well out there. Gamecock Nation gearing up for the holidays here. It's kind of that time of year where I don't know about y'all. I am just mailing it in at work. My feet are up on the desk as much as possible. Figuratively, of course, my chair is not very good. I'd probably fall backwards. But just that time of year where you just don't want to do anything. And now that we have the College Football Playoff and we got portal opening and we got scheduled releases, it's just all I want to do is just dive into things that are just not serious, like sports and like hypotheticals for the playoff and hypotheticals for the 2025 season. And then on top of it, fantasy football playoffs are going. So, yeah, needless to say, it's that time of year where you're just gearing up for the holidays, trying to get to the end of the year. Absolutely love it. I'm actually headed to a Christmas market myself on the weekend here, so maybe I'll see Santa and ask him for a Citrus bowl win. How about that? Get the big man involved on that one here. But enough of that. So hope y'all had a nice week and are gearing up for a good week weekend here. Got some football news to discuss and then I will jump into a preview for both basketball teams here. Not a ton going on outside of football and really the major sports right now. I think it was a break for finals and then you'll also have winter break right around there. So nonetheless, not a lot going on around athletics. There's obviously a lot going around, a lot going on. College with our neighbors to the north, unc. I'm not going to get into all that, but a lot of news going on there. But talking specifically about South Carolina football here, it was a lot of news really flurrying the last couple of days here. So I'm going to start with some transfer portal news here. There's more guys than this, but some notable names that have entered the portal that I felt were significant enough to share here at least. Like, got a little bit of a reaction from myself. Again, this is not the complete list. You can find that there's I think on three does it. I think 247 does it as well. Where you can track sort of who from each school is in that. But from South Carolina you have Wide receiver Elijah Caldwell has entered the portal. Tight ends Nick Elksness and Connor Cox have entered the Portal. Selfishly, I'm sad to see Connor Cox go because it was just fun to see that jersey on the field. But this does raise the question of depth in the tight end position. You have Michael Smith, who's going to be back next year. You just recruited Mike Tyler, so I would expect Beamer & Co. To try and backfill a spot with the Portal, potentially with the tight ends. I don't know what Brady Hunt's deal is. I wanted to say it was just one year of eligibility, but I've seen his name get thrown around for next year potentially. So something to keep an eye on there. And then you also had defensive end Elijah Davis enter the Portal. He came in last year from juco, was highly rated from those Franks came in as like sort of that interior D line. They moved him to edge. I was excited to see him get some more snaps this year, but all told, just not a lot of production. It was more of a potential what if and then you had quarterback Robbie Ashford enter the portal there. So want to give a shout out to Robbie Ashford, like thank you for your service. Akron game was the Bobby football game, second half of the LSU game. He really did his damnedest to try and win that football game. I think he's going somewhere to try and become the starter. I think he knew that he was going to come in and battle Lenorris a little bit here, but really knew that his role was to be a steady backup veteran presence for Lenoris. But I do think that having him in the building this past year helped prepare the team for frankly those running quarterbacks you know, that we faced. You look at Milroe, you look at Marcel Reed and the defense bottled those guys up pretty well and I got to believe that being able to practice against Robbie Ashford helped that. So hope he finds a home. Wouldn't be surprised if he follows Dowell to App State, but nonetheless here. So fingers crossed that from the Portal perspective, the Gamecocks don't lose too much more. I mean right now it seems like nothing too drastic. Dylan Stewart inked a deal with the Garnet Trust, so that was huge. He's going to be back. I already said Michael Smith big Trees coming back. So hopefully there's not this big bombshell leaving. But you never know nowadays with college football. So fingers crossed that we don't lose too much production via the portal there. Also, speaking of football, here it is award season and the Gamecocks have been very busy there as well. So going to list off a few here. SEC Freshman of the Year was awarded to Lenora Sell us. Excuse me, Lenora Sellers.
[00:06:21] I mean, I don't know who else you could possibly give it to. SEC Defensive Player of the Year went to Kyle Kennard. Kenard also won the Nagursky Award, which that's a huge deal. That is the top defensive player in the country. So shout out to Kyle Kennard, fan for life, nice guy, worked in the community. So really cool to see that. And then Shane Beamer was named AP Coach of the Year for the sec.
[00:06:48] It's funny how things work. AP didn't show us any love throughout the regular season in their rankings, but here they are now. He is also a finalist for National Coach of the Year, so some really cool accolades for the team. You also have plenty of first team, sec, second team, sec, those types of accolades. You know, Kai Kroger was there, Dylan Stewart, Josiah Thompson for freshman. So really, really cool to see. And, you know, it makes sense. Guys had a hell of a year and you should be rewarded as such.
[00:07:21] But in other news for the football team, we no longer have a vacancy for offensive coordinator. That was quick as Mike Shula was promoted to offensive coordinator. So Shane Beamer staying in house on this one, promoting Shula from offensive analyst to oc. And you know, I was thinking about this one, and while this might not be the sexiest of hires, and maybe Shula is not this hot name that's coming from this offense that's lighting up scoreboards, it's a good, sensible hire. It's the right hire for right now. Because right now South Carolina is in a critical position where you had one of your best seasons in like a decade and you have a chance to get a 10th win, which has only happened, I think, four other times in program history. So right now it's about how do you keep momentum, how do you keep doing what worked well, build off of that and maybe improve on some of the areas where you didn't. And you have to capitalize on having an incredible quarterback right now who still needs to develop, but clearly was starting to thrive in what you had in place now. So in my opinion, and seemingly Shane Beamer's as well, the biggest thing right now you needed to do was to have continuity, keep a familiar face in the building. You know, Shula was the on field assistant for Dowell, so he was working with Lenorris and the whole offense during the game when the bullets are flying, he's the one on the field talking to those guys. Lenora's trusts him, he's familiar. I would imagine that not a whole lot is going to change in terms of terminology and the play sheet and things like that. Of course Shula is going to put his own stamp on it. He's going to have his own style and I'm sure he has his own plays and things like that he'll incorporate. But you're not starting from scratch, right?
[00:09:22] You get to sort of have a little bit of a leg up where if you brought a guy in from, let's just say the Mac or whatever, you got a whole new install. And in this era of the portal and things like that, you want to make sure that you can have that story to tell right away. And so the guys on offense now, they know and trust Shula. You can do that. I like his experience. He spent a lot of his career in the NFL where he was the quarterback coach and worked with the Carolina Panthers while Cam Newton was there. I believe he was also their OC as well, where Cam had some of his best years of his career. He's worked with Josh Allen as well. But then also he has experience in the collegiate ranks where he was head coach at Alabama for a small stint. So really well rounded experience. Again, I think it's a sensible hire. I'm sure that Lenoris was consulted in some form. Right. You're not letting him make that call as a, you know, 20 year old college student athlete. But you want him to feel comfortable with it. It'll be a smoother transition. And I mean, when you see what Lenoris and this team did to end the year, I think any offensive coach will be licking their chops to get a, to get a crack at it and you'll consult with them and who knows, maybe this opens the door for more collaboration, you know, with a guy like Sean Elliott where maybe we say, hey Shula, you're going to work hand in hand with Lenorris, you're going to be the QB's coach, which he is going to be. And then you're also going to be really heavily involved in developing the passing game. But we are going to let Sean Elliott have his fingerprints all over the running game. You're calling the plays, but developing the playbook. And developing that overall scheme, y'all are going to work a little bit more hand in hand than maybe when it was Dowell. So long winded response here. Answer to say I am pretty happy with the higher and I think we should be as well. But speaking of talking about games and next year and what that looks like, the 2025 football schedule was released. I absolutely love it.
[00:11:35] I love college football. I love being in the SEC because the 2024 season is still very much going on. Like we have bowl games, we have playoff games, we have the Army Navy game still. And we're talking 2025 schedule. And when I talk about like distracting myself from work, this is what I did pretty much all day today. I just looked at this schedule here. So when we talk about the opponents in conference, that stays the same. We knew that coming into this year. If you remember, they said we're going to do just basically a home and home while we figure out what the new look SEC looks like. So it just sort of flips, right? Like Oklahoma coming to Willie B. Alabama coming to Willie B. We're going to Ole Miss, we're going to Missouri, right? So any SEC team that we played this year stays the same, but just flipped. But it is interesting where you're opening the season in Atlanta against Virginia Tech. So we talk about strength of schedule a lot here and we talked about what that looks like with out of conference games. But this, this game was locked in a couple years ago. So really neat that Gamecocks are going to have that opportunity on a national stage to play Virginia Tech Week 1, try and get off the right, on the right foot there and then. So when you look at the schedule here, and I'm not going to go into great detail here, that's for August, right? But you open the game, you open the season, excuse me, with five games. Then you have your bye week and you see the opportunity here where as far as how they finished this year and maybe historically as well, like your tougher competition is not really until that bye week. It's almost like a sliding scale here. So the Gamecocks have an opportunity to certainly start off hot. You look at Virginia Tech, se State, Vandy Vandy's at home and you have that win streak against them. So it's potential that you have a really nice start to the year. Then you get to that fourth game, which is Mizzou, and that's away. That game feels a lot like this past year's Kentucky game. Now, Kentucky obviously had a down year, but that was an early season test in the SEC on the road that you looked at it because you'll remember LSU came right after and you kind of said, well, this is a game that could be a linchpin for a good season where if you can handle business here on the road, you might be able to stack some or it'll pay off down the line. Which it did. It proved out to be a huge win. So I look at that Mizzou game potentially with that type of importance as well, because then you come right home against Kentucky. So there's a potential to have a very, very nice start for South Carolina.
[00:14:24] And what I like about this schedule is you don't have any back to back games that are on the road, so that's great. Then you end the year coming off a bye. You only have three games in November, two of which are at home. So it's sort of the same as this past season where sandwich between the bye weeks are probably your toughest games. Lsu, Oklahoma, Bama and Ole Miss, two of which are on the road. So if you can sort of navigate those road games and if you can split them again, you don't have any back to back. So if you look at Mizzou, lsu, Ole Miss and A and M, if you can split those and then handle business at home, I mean that's, that's the formula and you know, that's penciling in Virginia Tech, handling business there in Atlanta. But it's a very interesting schedule, I think kind of similar to this year. It's pretty balanced. And I love the fact that the Gamecocks don't have to go on the road back to back week. So yeah, gotta love it. Pour over it.
[00:15:30] Tell me what you think. DM me. But yeah, I think all things considered, it shakes out fairly well. But enough talking about games that haven't even happened yet that are six plus months away, eight months away. Let's talk games that are happening this weekend, huh? And I'm talking men's basketball here. The guys are back in action this Saturday at colonial life against USC upstate. Tip off is set for 2pm now the team is looking to extend their winning streak to four games and they're really looking to continue playing at a high level. They're coming off playing some good competition where in really these last few games I feel like we've seen consistent offense from the Gamecocks. But I have really been more impressed with their defense looking much sharper than it did in some of those early contests. In the year we're still in a very early part of the season. But you know, those first few games, you really had to tighten up the screws on defense. The Gamecocks will be facing the Upstate Spartans, who are 4 and 8 on the year. They've been able to score at a pretty good clip when you look at it, but their defense has been very subpar and that's putting it nicely. So my crow to the game here and that's right, we do crows to the game not just for football, do it for basketball and we'll do crows to the series in baseball when the spring rolls around. So crow to the game here. I'd like to see Jamari Thomas log five or more assists. Right now he's averaging a little over three. But when you look at those games, especially recently where the offensive output as a whole have been higher, that's sort of been the number where he's been at or above 5. So I'd like to see that again like, yes, you are playing USC Upstate, but I'd like to see him be that distributor. He can still score in bunches himself, but I'd like to see that number be right around five and then sticking on the hardwood here. Talking women's basketball, the ladies will also be in action this weekend at Colonial Life. They are taking on USF Sunday at 2pm now, while USF might not be this Power 4 competition, this is still a pretty solid out of conference opponent. They are 5 and 5, but have played both Louisville and Mississippi State close this year. So they can hang with you. And this is the type of opponent who, if you face them in a tournament setting, let's say in March, that they can be tricky, right? So you have to bring your A game to this one. It's kind of a good prep for that type of scenario. My crow to the game in this one is Raven Johnson needs to have another strong offensive game.
[00:18:22] She did so in the last one against tcu and when she is able to score consistently, it just opened things up so much more for everyone on the floor, right? And she's bringing the ball up. She's going to have eyes on her. So if she is a threat to pull up and shoot or maybe maybe take one to the hole like it's another wrinkle to this team. And obviously it's a deep team. You have other scorers like Tahina Powpow, Malaysia, Phil Wiley, Tessa Johnson, et cetera. But I think if you can get some solid, consistent offense from Raven, it just opened things up a lot. And I'd like to see it here. 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.
