Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] On this episode of Cox talking Gamecock's post game reaction to the Ole Miss loss and a weekend recap from around fall sports. Okay, here we go.
[00:00:54] Okay. Welcome to episode 265 of Cox talking Game Cox. I am your host, Tim Cox, where I will keep every episode from 1801 to 2001. And I hope, I hope everyone out there was, you know, able to find some joy this weekend. I hope that from, aside from a couple of hours Saturday, you were able to enjoy your weekend, maybe find some rest, maybe mow the lawn, something like that. And even around the game, I hope you had fun tailgating, maybe you listened to some good music, sitting in traffic on the way home or something like that. I hope all of us were able to find a little bit of joy outside of those few hours on Saturday here. If you, if you can't tell already, I'm still feeling some type of way and we're going to just air it out. We're going to air it out here like we do after the tough losses, and then we're going to do our best to move on as we get into the early part of this week here. So before I jump into the postgame reaction and everything here, we do have a bit of a weekend recap here. Got a couple scores to report for y'all. Starting on Friday, men's soccer took a tough loss to Kentucky. Two nil. They are still having a nice start to the season, but that's a tough one right there. And then we have women's soccer. They tied Vanderbilt one. One quick shout out, I mean, or, you know, mention college football this weekend. Vandy leading the charge, upsetting Alabama. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Crazy bananas weekend in the world of college football. Upset city. Upsets galore. Nobody is safe.
[00:02:43] Would have been nice to get on that would have been nice and part of that nonetheless here. Then, moving on to Saturday, women's cross country. That's right. Finishing fifth in the live in Lou Classic brought on by Louisville. That is it from around the fall. Sports next week, there's a busy end of the week. So looking forward to watching all those games, all those scores, those highlights, whatever it may be, and rooting on everybody. And it's good to find that positivity anywhere you can because it does not always come from our football team. But let's dive into it here and talk about the Ole Miss game, little postgame recap reaction, whatever you want to call it.
[00:03:28] I'm going to be very honest with you all here.
[00:03:30] You know, normally when I get ready to talk about games, whether it's pre game, you know, the postgame, I jot down a couple of thoughts of what I'm going to talk about. You know, like, do you know, like when I talk about my crows to the game, right. I. I write that down. Of course, when we talk about postgame, sometimes I'll write a couple observations down as I'm thinking it during the game or Sunday, whenever I'm getting ready to record, I, you know, will say, you know, what did I think about the game here? And I talk about what I liked, what I didn't like.
[00:04:03] I didn't do that for this. I didn't do that for this because I am just incredibly, incredibly disappointed with that performance. And y'all know me. Y'all know that normally I am a glass half full kind of guy. I'm a positive guy and I'm gonna continue to be. And as we move past this loss and we look at the record that, you know, we'll have now at three and two, you got a couple of tough games ahead of you. But the SEC is pretty open, right? It's competitive, it's hard, it's tough, but there are beatable teams. Missouri went down, Bama went down. Not saying that we can necessarily repeat that, but the point is there's still a good season out there on the table and I do think we have a pretty good team still.
[00:04:53] What we saw Saturday afternoon against Ole Miss is nowhere near indicative of the team that we have. I am incredibly disappointed in this coaching staff for how they came out of the gates after the bye week. Nonetheless here. So instead of breaking down what I liked, what I didn't like, I'm just going to talk here. This is just a stream of consciousness here. And really you can break this game down into a tale of two halves. You really can break it down into a tale of three quarters versus one. But we're going to talk about two things here and it's going to get me a little heated and then we're just going to move on from the rest. Okay? This coaching staff and Shane Beamer, he'll be the first one to say it, making some of these decisions, they fall on him. This coaching staff absolutely spotted Ole Miss those 14 points in the first quarter. It took the crowd out of the game early. It took the momentum away from us and it put our defense in an impossible position against a good offense that Ole Miss has.
[00:06:02] Decision number one, that fake punt, I understand that those first couple of plays, you move the ball, okay, you come up just short. It's very tempting to go for it. There. I think we were on what, our 37 or so, give or take our side of the field, beginning of the game, very beginning of the game.
[00:06:23] If you're gonna go for it, if you're gonna be aggressive and if you're gonna play that type of game, fine, but go for it. Actually go for it. Put your offense on the field, run it between the tackles, have your big, strong quarterback sneak it, run a draw, something. If you're going to go for it, go for it and put your offense on the field. To run a fake punt in that scenario makes no sense to me. That was a bonehead move.
[00:06:56] That decision screams desperation. That's the type of decision that you make when you're down or when you're one in three or something like that. Or if you're facing the number one team and you're just really trying to get a spark, or if it was late in the game, if it was in the third quarter and maybe even if it's still a one score game, whatever, maybe you could have punted the ball. And yes, that's tough to come up empty. And I understand that you want to jump on Ole Miss early and make them play from behind. The defense dominated them in their opening series, a series where they've always had success with the scripted plays.
[00:07:41] You can punt it away with your all american punter and then put your defense, which is top half of the SEC, on the field, and make them march if they're going to score, don't do them any favors and give Ole miss a short field, which is exactly what happened with that fake punt. It was a terrible, terrible mistake. That's something I would have expected from Shane Beemer in his first year, not year four. That is a bad, bad, bad call.
[00:08:11] And it hurt us. And you gave up the touchdown because they were right there. So now all of a sudden, now you're playing behind the sticks, playing behind, you know, the eight ball. Here you got your red shirt, freshman quarterback who's coming off an injury, trying to get back into the. Into the swing of things.
[00:08:27] And then the decision to have Robbie Anderson, Robbie Ashford, excuse me, Robbie Ashford go into that game.
[00:08:39] It makes no sense to me in that spot as well. That is overthinking at best. I understand he played incredibly well against Akron, and I believe that the game plan was probably to get him some looks and have him run and things like that and maybe set up down the line a pass to try and catch all misnapping, but you're galaxy braining this.
[00:09:04] Just line up and play. When this team lined up and played against Ole Miss, they were hanging with them. They were standing toe to toe. But instead you got too cute with it. And Robbie fumbles, right, the bad handoff, you fumble the ball, you gave Ole miss the ball. Short field, they score again. You're down 14 points.
[00:09:25] It makes no sense.
[00:09:28] The game planning out of the gate was just not good. And that's not what we're used to seeing from a Shane Beamer team after the bye week. Normally they come out sharp, they come out crisp. They're on the same page. They were not. They clearly were not.
[00:09:45] So those two decisions right there in my mind were, you couldn't recover from it. Yes, it was the first quarter, but when you look at how the rest of the game played out, you only gave up one other touchdown. Right? They scored. Ole Miss scored 13 points after the first quarter.
[00:10:12] In the second half, they only scored three. Our defense was playing incredibly well. And yeah, we'll always have. We'll always have the juice Wells fumble. Like that could have been another touchdown, but it wasn't right. Will always have that moment, which was great. Couldn't have happened. Couldn't have happened to a better guy.
[00:10:33] But my point is, your defense was playing lights out, essentially. Like, they gave up the two scores, but they were put in a terrible position.
[00:10:44] So this coaching staff needed to recognize earlier that, you know what? Like, we can stand with these guys. We have a really good defense. We're all over them and they just over thought it.
[00:10:58] And then you get the three points in the second quarter. You have, unfortunately, the missed kick, but you end up in a situation where you end up never finding the end zone, the South Carolina offense.
[00:11:12] But it's just such a shame because when you take away those 14 points, like, yes, you're still losing the game, but it's 13 to three without those two scores.
[00:11:26] It's right there. It's for the taking that changes every play call that changes how Ole Miss plays gonna change the South Carolina plays. So it's really a tale of three quarters versus the one, but especially that second half.
[00:11:41] And then on, on our offensive side of the ball here, you just couldn't get anything going. And Maisie O'Bennett is, is really good, you know, but he is just a true freshman. This offense on the, on the outside, it lacks that true game breaker. And there are going to be games where Jared Brown has that big catch, Gage Larva Dane has that big catch, Maisie O'Bennett has that big catch. Right there's going to be the games where they step up.
[00:12:12] But that lack of true wide receiver, one, that true threat to shine in those moments, reared its head here because you didn't know who to go to regularly. Lenoris was seemingly jittery, and in my opinion, he was running for his life a lot.
[00:12:33] Could never get into a rhythm. You had a couple penalties which negated good plays, some of which the calls were suspect. But once again, we're talking about penalties wiping out positive plays. Again, I believe it was the same amount of penalties for Ole Miss, more yards for the Gamecocks, but just not clean football. And in a game where you really had to do that, they weren't able to do so.
[00:13:03] And then when we're talking about running the ball here, you know, you have Lenora Sellers as your leading rusher. But Oscar Attaway, he did a fine job. But what the heck was going on with Rocket? Like, you know, he seemed to be getting into a groove later in the game. What was going on to start the game? Were the coaches nursing that ankle on his behalf? Were they thinking something was going on? But then they started to give him a little bit more. He ended up with eight carries, just one shy of Attaway's nine. And I thought he looked good. You know, Attaway is fine, but he doesn't, at least from what we've seen so far, in my opinion, he doesn't have that ability to break the tackle for the long run quite like Rocket does. You know, it's just tough.
[00:13:55] It's just tough, you know, and to not be able to find the end zone really, really stinks. The defense.
[00:14:04] Couple. Couple mistakes. Couple mistakes. You know, you think of the Dylan. The Dylan Stewart penalty, like, can't be doing that. That's a freshman mistake. In that moment, what you did, the situation just can't be getting flagged for that. Unnecessary roughness, 15 yards, just nothing. Not good or unsportsmanlike conduct, rather. But the defense they played, they played well. Like this. This is a good defense we have here. Like, yes, only the one sack, but you had seven tackles for loss. I just felt that the defense was really in control. Like, you were able to line up against Ole Miss and just play, and things were okay, but the offense couldn't get it going. I didn't like the game plan. It felt like there was no rhythm. It felt predictable at times.
[00:14:58] You couldn't get anything going. And Ole Miss is a tough team to play against. And when you spot them, the 14 points, it's not gonna do you any favors. And, yeah, they're shady. Of course they're shady. Mystery injuries after a big first down, all these things happening, it just, you can scratch your head and, you know, we can sit here and complain about them.
[00:15:22] May or may not have some illegitimate injury timeouts. But that doesn't take away from the fact that you shot yourself in the foot multiple times in this game, whether it be from bad coaching decisions, penalties, turnover. You know, like, there are these things that added up, you know, little mistakes that add up and have big consequence.
[00:15:48] And so, unfortunately, this, this one, this one hurts because I looked at it in this, in the second half thinking, my God, like, we, we could and should be in this game, but you just couldn't get yourself out of the hole that you dug. And unfortunately, when you have a young quarterback and a team that, again, has only played a couple of times together in those game situations, you know, you had the Akron game, guys were off with injury, then you had the bye week, you know, still coming together a little bit here, especially on the offense.
[00:16:24] You can't come from behind like that, you know, so it was a really unfortunate set of circumstances in this game. And Gamecocks are sitting at three and two, one and two in the sec.
[00:16:37] And, you know, you are what your record says you are, right? Like, you got a winning record right now.
[00:16:45] You came up just shy in a couple sec matchups here, and the Gamecocks are staring down the barrel at two really tough games on the road coming up in Alabama and Oklahoma. So it's going to be really interesting to see what shakes out over this next week or so, I think.
[00:17:04] Well, we know that the offense has better performances in them.
[00:17:10] It's just frustrating to see now two different times where the offense has failed to really get going. You know, week one, yes, it's week one, but it was just all sorts of out of whack. And I kind of got that same sense against Ole Miss that it was just guys were just not on the same page, not clicking like they should. Drops, you know, the protection. Aw, spotty at times. It, you know, it's just, it just didn't look like a team that was prepared. And we've come to be accustomed to a degree of having a team look good after the bye week. That's not what we saw. So you're in a tough spot if you're Shane Beamer in the Gamecocks right now, sitting at three and two with two back to back road games against very good teams, you know, one game, one game at a time, of course, you gotta find a way to look inward and say, how do we get better from this defensively? You know, again, I really think they did a pretty darn good job. Like, you know, like, there's a few things that I can sit here and pick at, but I.
[00:18:23] I'm not blaming them for giving up 27 points because, a, that's a hell of a lot lower than what Ole Miss averages to this point in the year.
[00:18:33] B, they were put in a terrible position for two of those scores at least. So, offensively, we have to figure out what's going on. And that's on Shane Beamer, and that's on dowel loggins. You know, we. We can talk about Dowel loggins maybe another time here.
[00:18:51] Jury is still out on him, really, if you. If you ask me, jury is still out on whether this guy is the perfect guy for the job here. You know, offense looked great against LSU, looked good against Akron, but you've had a couple of weird performances this point in the year. So if you're the Gamecocks, you gotta really just regroup as best as you can. Get ready for a tough challenge in Alabama. Flush this one away and just continue to get better. Continue to get better. Work on the things that you can improve on, continue to get healthy. A guy like rocket needs to be 110%. A guy like the Norris. Now that he's back into the swing of things, he can get that regular rhythm back and get that loving feeling back. And we need to continue to bring these receivers along, have someone be that go to, and it might be mesio. And I love Mazio. I'm a big fan of his already. But you need someone. Need someone to step up there. So with that, y'all, that wraps up this episode. Let's move past it. We're moving past it as best we can. You know, Tuesday, Wednesday is usually when we really start to turn the page for me, but please follow me on social media, Twitter or X is Cox Gamecocks. Instagram is just the name of the show, Cox talking Game Cox. And please, like, subscribe and review the podcast. I appreciate all y'all. Go, Cox.
