Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] On this episode of Cox Talking Gamecocks, basketball season is back. An offensive play caller is named, and a bye week retrospective. Okay, here we go.
[00:00:54] Okay.
[00:00:55] Welcome to episode three, 353 of Cox Talking Gamecocks. I am your host, Tim Cox, where I will keep every episode from 1801 to 2001. And this has been a pretty chill week, huh? Compared to the last month. Two months. Three months, Yo. This has been a week where, hey, I feel like there's a little less weight on the collective shoulders of the Gamecock fan base. You have a new direction. You know, there's some fun dialogue going on, and then there's more Gamecock sports in action. There's wins. You know, I just think the collective mentals of our fan base benefited greatly from really what turned out to be a perfect timing between basketball starting and a bye week and a new offensive game plan seemingly hoping to be put in place around the corner. So, yeah, it's been a good week. And this weekend, y', all, man, kick back, relax. There's going to be some good sports on. And, yeah, there's just. It's just good vibes this weekend. Good vibes this weekend, but. Okay, so with that being said, I have a quick housekeeping note, and then I'm going to jump into all sorts of of scores, updates, and news here. But first, because it is a bye week, even with basketball season having started. Going to stick with the usual game plan here and no episode on Monday. So just like football team, having the weekend off. Going to give myself a little bit of a beat. So no episode on Monday, no weekend recap. Of course, if anything major happens, I will update you all next episode, but that will be on Friday. So in a week from today, previewing the Texas A and M game and then catching up on basketball and everything. And then we are off to the races, really, until the holidays. So very exciting stuff there. But. All right, let's do a week in review here. Really only one score outside of the major sports to talk about, and that was Tuesday.
[00:03:03] Men's soccer was in action and unfortunately lost to West Virginia 2 to 1.
[00:03:11] But it was a busy week for Carolina Athletics as there was action on the hardwood. Both men's and basketball, women's team. Excuse me, both men's and women's teams. There we go.
[00:03:24] Are back in action on the basketball court. And it's fun. I mean, there's a couple of things that I love. It's this amazing time of year where you get all the major sports in action. You get those initial college basketball games. But it's just extra sweet when you can sit back and relax and say that we have two undefeated basketball teams and really just fun games to watch here. So starting with the ladies here. As they were underway Monday night, they took on Grand Canyon and won, 94 to 54.
[00:04:03] Obviously this is a little bit of a new look squad, couple of new players in key positions and whatnot, but this was your classic South Carolina basketball game here. Just jumping on top of Grand Canyon and then really riding it the rest of the way there. Wire to wire win here, which is super exciting. And it's just really great to see this team back on the court for everything that they did. I mean, taking a pretty dominant, you know, no doubt lead into the half and, you know, letting some other players get in the rotation there. But Joyce Edwards, you know, doing a nice effort there, a lot of minutes there. Expect some big things from her this season. Tessa Johnson, love, love seeing her in the starting lineup. 19 points in 33 minutes. Raven Johnson had a nice game herself, and then lotson was with 20 points there. So it was a good effort, you know, and it is going to be a little bit of a, maybe a touch and feel thing for a little bit here in that rotation, of course, without Khloe Kits, but seemingly starting off on an Amazing foot here, 10 for the gamecocks. And it's just what you want to see, right? Just a no doubter way to start the season. So we're going to see how really the bench shapes up here. You're going to need to find some big contributions there. McDowell could be a good spot there. McDaniel also could be good. And then of course, Adele talk as well. So we're going to see how this, you know, early part of the season goes, but this is where South Carolina and Dawn Staley, in my mind, will be really working out some of these kinks, right? Like, you should start off hot, you should handle a lot of this out of conference competition, but really expect the Lady Gamecocks to roll here and, you know, get that rotation set.
[00:05:59] And then right after that. On Tuesday night, men's basketball was in action at home at Colonial Life. Starting off against North Carolina A and T. And they started off with A nice win, 91 to 72. If you saw any of the videos, it seemed like they did a couple of tweaks with the pregame entrance. They played 2001 to start this game. If they start doing that at the basketball games, that's just absolutely electric. But this was exactly what you wanted to see from the Q Zips. Like, the Q Zips are back. Obviously, last year did not go the way that we wanted to.
[00:06:41] Lamont Paris retooled the roster and it just felt so great to see Meeche Johnson back in the Garden in black and seeing Miles Studi as well. You know, he obviously had to sit out a large portion of the year last year and glad to see him healthy and active and productive.
[00:06:59] But I think that this roster fits more of what Lamont Paris wants. You know, you're going to see guys distributing the ball. I think the biggest call out that we had was the amount of players who scored and the amount of players who hit from three. So I think the three ball is going to be a big part of the repertoire this season for the basketball squad. You got a couple of big men who can shoot too, which is exactly what Lamont Paris wants. And then Meeche Johnson is just a guy who is energized and excited to be back in Columbia. He said as much at the post game conference there. Had a nice showing with 14 points.
[00:07:42] Look for him to continue to distribute, but, you know, he might be tasked with being more of that point guard and we saw that in the first season he was in Columbia, where, you know, he might fit a little bit more naturally into that too. But he still is a very serviceable point guard. It was really exciting to see Eli Ellis getting in the action with 11 points. That was great to see Kobe Knox productive. Capek is going to be good here and Studi, you know, getting nine points as well. So, you know, you really saw contributions from the bench, from the starting five in what ended up being a very good win and start for the Q Zips. Q Zips are back. You know, this team looks like it could be fun. This team looks like they're going to have some energy and bring a high octane offense, albeit in a small sample size. But if you get contributions from your bench like you did, and you get consistency from, you know, three of your five starters, you can't ask for much more than that. It's very evenly distributed. Last year it was like, can these two guys go off? And if they can go off, then you ask for a couple small contributions here and there and you find yourself in the game here. You had, what do we have? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 players in double figures.
[00:09:02] That is a recipe for success.
[00:09:04] And that's what it looked like in the tournament year. Right? So very exciting to see. Welcome back to basketball season. We are off to the races here and it's great. It's a great time of year. Absolutely love it.
[00:09:20] But all the while, while going through that, there still is football, it is still football season. I know we are towards the tail end of this thing here, but there's a lot going on in the South Carolina program. I'm not going to rehash all of it, but of course it was dealing with the fallout and next steps and everything from Mike Shula being dismissed. And there were a lot of question marks as to who was going to take over those responsibilities. Well, now we have that answer. Coach Beamer confirming that wide receivers coach Mike Furry will be calling the plays. So he said that it's going to be a collaborative effort in terms of game planning and things like that, which he kind of said was already what they did. But it seems like it's going to be even more collaborative. I would imagine Sean Elliott's going to have a big voice in that room. I would imagine Mike Furry, Coach Blackwell as well.
[00:10:14] So they're going to game plan, but the guy calling the plays with the headset is going to be Mike Furry. He has some experience doing that when he was at Limestone. He called plays when he was the head coach as well. He has obviously great experience in the NFL, meeting with the mines and things like that. He was not an NFL oc, but this feels like the correct option because I don't know what else you were going to do. He has some experience.
[00:10:42] They were a high scoring offense, albeit at Limestone. But he, you look to the guy who has a great relationship with his players. He was already technically the passing game coordinator, so he understands the game planning and things like that. He's going to have a really good understanding as to what Lenoris feels comfortable with. He's going to have a fantastic understanding of the type of plays and everything that the wide receivers feel comfortable with. And then I think he's going to be very, very open to working with Sean Elliott and being in concert with him.
[00:11:18] So look, we'll get into it more next week, but you have an additional week to prepare for this. So not only is that on Furry for now, accepting some of these more responsibilities, studying up and things like that, but now he has that extra week to communicate with the players. Right. Like I don't know how much a wide receivers coach is sitting down with the starting quarterback. Right. Or how deep of a conversation he's really having with the offensive line coach.
[00:11:51] So now he's going to have that opportunity to talk to these Guys and say, like, here's what I'm thinking. Do you think we can accomplish that? Like. Or what's your comfortability level with this type of game plan, these type of plays? Like, what would your thoughts be if we really honed in on these?
[00:12:08] So it's going to be interesting to see.
[00:12:12] Do I think he's auditioning for the job next year? In a weird way, I do.
[00:12:19] I think certain things have to happen, most notably winning out and winning out because of the offense.
[00:12:30] I would put him as a candidate if things go well, but I think that's putting the cart before the horse.
[00:12:37] And let's just focus on looking like a normal offense and you're going to have two good defenses that you have to go against in these final three.
[00:12:46] And let's just see what we can do. Right. But it's going to be exciting to see. And look, if you're Texas A and M, you got a game this week and you're saying, well, we're going to have to go against South Carolina, who has the star power, and we're not going to really know what they're going to run because the guy calling the plays is not going to have those same tendencies than his predecessor.
[00:13:12] So we'll see how it goes. You know, but with it being the bye week, I wanted to take at least a few minutes here and just. Just talk about where things are at. Right. And really just the state of things.
[00:13:26] So sitting with the record that we have with three wins, it's.
[00:13:34] It's disappointing. You know, I think this is going to be a year that I think every fan will look back on.
[00:13:43] Certainly Shane Beamer will look back on as a what could have been.
[00:13:50] And it's going to take some digging to figure out exactly what went wrong. But this season went as sideways, about as sideways as you could have imagined. Like, the only thing that could have been worse about this year is if really you dropped that opener to Virginia Tech, which was, you know, kind of too close for comfort for a lot of that game. Right.
[00:14:16] But I think it was a combination of the previous year's success, which I tried to say in the off season. I tried to tell myself throughout this year that they don't correlate, you know, like, that that team had a defense that was even more lights out.
[00:14:37] You know, there was a newness and a freshness to Lenores that was different. It was a different oc, but you had the success of last year, and there was just a belief that any deficits that might be on Defense Lenoris would make up for.
[00:14:52] And instead we got a defense that has some moments, of course, that they want to take back, but it's honestly been pretty darn solid.
[00:15:02] Instead, it was this offense that just never found a footing and never lived up to the potential and was the piece of the team. That, frankly, is why you lost games.
[00:15:19] And, you know, when Shula was hired, there was some discourse about it. You know, you had some people who were questionable about it.
[00:15:28] I bought in because I'm just gonna have faith that things are gonna work out, and I'm not gonna start negging on a guy before we even see what he can do on the field, you know, But I think looking back on it, that was a mistake. Like, I. Obviously it was, right? We fired him, but, I mean, Beamer must have just sat there and said, well, he. He knows Lenores. You know, he understands what I want to do with the offense, how I think it operates best.
[00:16:01] He has a good resume and things like that. But in reality, he hadn't called plays in so long.
[00:16:07] And people kept saying, well, he coached Cam Newton so well. Cam Newton was the number one pick, NFL mvp, went to the super bowl. Like, yeah, Lenores has some similar qualities, and the fact that he has a good arm, he's a strong dude, he can run well, but, like, that's an insane comparison. The guy won the Heisman. You know, I know he had hopes of the Heisman. But you. You get my point that you can't look at this one season that Shula had and say, oh, well, this was why he's going to work with Lenoris.
[00:16:38] I.
[00:16:39] I think that that was the mistake that really downed the season, and it's just been disappointing, you know, Like, I. I've said it here many Mondays now, right, where you get so excited for these games and you look so forward to it, and when they come up short, you hurt for a little bit. And it's because we put so much time, energy, and money into this thing, and that's what fans do.
[00:17:05] But when you say not just on a week to week basis, but like, this entire year has been a disappointment, it stinks, you know, and there were moments where things could have been better. I don't think that we were necessarily a couple of plays away from being, you know, with seven wins right now.
[00:17:30] But, you know, you look at the Alabama game like you're just tantalizingly close to that.
[00:17:37] Oklahoma was a mess, and I think with a competent offense, we could have hung with those guys.
[00:17:44] Mizzou, you're not able to close. Right. Vandy was a train wreck. You know, of course, Lenores gets hurt in that one, but, yeah, so it's just, you know, you're taking stock at this thing, and you got three games left, and here we are.
[00:18:01] You know, we've only done it, you know, a couple times, but, like, here we are again being like, can we win out to make a bowl game? You know, and it's just crazy to think that that's where we are, you know, I mean, I did my pre game.
[00:18:20] My. My pregame predictions.
[00:18:22] I think I had us winning 10 games. You know, I knew that that was a little optimistic, but I certainly thought eight was. I felt like eight was the floor.
[00:18:31] Now we're hoping for six and that. And that includes a top five upset on the road.
[00:18:38] So that's just where we are, right? Like, we went from thinking we might have a legitimate chance to be in the playoffs, right? Or at least be in the mix.
[00:18:46] And, man. So the hope moving forward for these final three games is that it truly was an offensive coordinator's philosophy and game planning that was holding this team back. And if nothing else, a new voice and someone who I hope will be more aggressive and leaning into the strengths of this team can energize this group and be aggressive and creative and make it more fun to watch. That's the minimum right now.
[00:19:18] And if you can win these games along the way, like, that'd be fantastic. Like, what a story that would be, huh?
[00:19:24] But nonetheless, that wraps up this episode. No six pack of picks this week. We're taking a bye week with that as well. But 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 pod. I appreciate all y'. All go Cox.
