Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] On this episode of Cox Talking game. Cox baseball begins their regional. Women's basketball adds a transfer. And men's basketball lines up a big opponent. Okay, here we go.
[00:00:54] Okay. Welcome to episode 246 of Cox Talking Gamecocks. I am your host, Tim Cox. Where I will keep every episode from 1801 to 2001. And hope you all are ready for a big weekend out there. Gamecocks, we got a lot going on for us here. A lot of pressure, a lot of excitement. Talking playoffs, talking regionals. Very, very exciting here. Me, personally, I got a big weekend ahead. Outside of watching our Gamecocks play. I'm actually headed down to North Carolina. Not quite our home in Columbia, but close by. Going to be visiting some friends and whatnot. But, hey, our baseball team is traveling to North Carolina. I might as well, too. Hopefully, I can bring some good vibes to our boys who are also visiting the state. Unfortunately, I won't be in the Raleigh area. But nonetheless, we'll still be in the state. And just even being close to the team. Will be a nice change of pace. Compared to what I normally have to do here. But got a fun episode for you here. Lot to go over here. But before that, I do have the handy dandy Gamecock fact and trivia calendar. If you missed it last episode. Bringing back the daily Gamecock trivia slash fact calendar. Summertime is here. It's a summertime staple on the show here. So today we actually have a fact. Here we go. Besides setting the South Carolina softball career home run record. On the final day of her final season in 2021. Mackenzie Basil also left Columbia as the program's all time leader in. In doubles and walks. Shout out, Mackenzie Basil. That's fantastic. On the final game. Final at bat in the final game. My goodness. Absolutely love to see that. And look at that. Forever etched in Gamecock lore. Whether it be on campus, in the record books. Or also on the trivia calendar, on the Cox talking Gamecock show. But shout out, softball team. Shout out, softball team. But before I jump into the regional preview here. Do have a little bit of a week in review for y'all here. Got a few pieces of news from this week. It was an exciting week around Gamecock athletics here. Starting with the equestrian team. That's right. We talk an equestrian right now. There's a new head coach. This comes after longtime head coach Boo major retired after a very legendary and storied career. Her replacement is actually former Gamecock's assistant coach. Who was previously at SMU as their head coach. So now the ex head coach at SMU in Carol. Carol Gwynne so Carol is coming off a couple of national championships and multiple national championships appearances at SM. You really had them cooking. She also clearly has those ties to USC after being a former assistant and seeing SEC championships, national championship appearances and things like that. So she should usher in an exciting new era for Gamecock equestrian. So shout out to coach Carol Gwynne and then also have some exciting news from the men's basketball team as it was announced that this upcoming season, the guys will have a massive out of conference game as the team will travel to assembly hall up in Bloomington, Indiana to take on the Indiana Hoosiers. It will be the first time the team has played there since 1973. I think I saw that back when they did that. Alex English was a sophomore, so just really going back and shaking things up. It's a very exciting matchup for this team and for a group that is looking to get back to the tournament, you know, having that strong non conference schedule, it can be the difference maker later in the year. I mean, just looking back on this past season, when seemingly the Gamecocks should have been ranked earlier than they were, that non conference schedule was getting knocked a little bit. I think when you give yourself more quad one, I'm assuming that's what Indiana will be. But quad one opportunities, even if some of them don't go your way, just having more of them gives you that better looking resume that the committee likes to see for the NCAA tournament. You look at Texas A and M this past year, their resume record wise was just okay, but they had so many quad one appearances that that actually carried a lot of weight. So very exciting matchup. Indiana has been mid the last couple of years, so hopefully the guys can go on the road. A true road game, which you don't always see with these big time programs. Normally there's neutral sight at a conference going to the midwest and hopefully you get a road w. And I saw that this is not even a home and home. This is just Lamont Paris not ducking any smoke, going to Indiana, big time road environment and let's see what we can do. But very exciting news there. And then sticking to the hardwood, got some news from the women's basketball team. And as Dawn Staley would say, a birdie flew into the nest. You know, that's. That's her version of welcome home. She's been doing that for longer, in fact. But when a new player joins the team, she tweeted it out on Wednesday and the news was that South Carolina added former Arkansas forward Merriam Dota via the transfer portal, so maybe a little bit on left field here, but very exciting nonetheless. Merriam is six foot four and she's coming to USC with two years of eligibility left. Last season she started all 33 games and averaged ten points, six rebounds and two blocks. Also, she shot 31% from three for a big that is very impressive there and it really does feel like a rich, got richer type of deal here. This might not have been a dire position of need. There's not really a dire position of need at this team, in this team right now with Camila Cardozo being the only departure. But I think Don looked at it like, hey, I can bring someone here who's a veteran, who has played in the SEC, who is getting better and better. When they played Arkansas, Don had very good things to say about her in the postgame conference. You're looking at Ashen Watkins really probably taking the mantle from Cardozo. You have some youth that's exciting and highly recruited in that forward, in that front court position as well. But now you have someone with that true game experience. And what's the one thing that's been so good for South Carolina for a couple of years now? It's the bench play. It's not just relying on five or six ladies to carry you that whole way. So now you're going to have a rotation that's three, maybe four deep in your front court, only to then be complimented by some fantastic guard play. I love this pickup. You know, you're bringing in someone who was very productive at the SEC level. You don't have to wait to have someone develop.
[00:08:43] Should someone be having an off game, you can slide her in. I love this pickup. Absolutely. Rich get richer. You love to see it. But now time to shift our focus to the baseball team because the time is now. The post season is fully here and underway as the Gamecocks hopeful quest to Omaha begins in the Raleigh regional. And I mean, it is true. Like, I know that this team has had its ups and downs, but they are very much in the regional. And if you're in the regional, you're in the dance and you have just a good a shot as any to get to Omaha. And despite some of the frustration that surrounded this team over the last couple of months here and some of the question marks around the man in charge and all that jazz, like, if you were to tell any Gamecock fan, like, hey, you're in a position where if you play well, you can advance and if you play well, there you can advance and next thing you know, you're in Omaha. Of course you're going to take that. And this is all we have to do now is just focus on what's ahead of us and try and get this thing done. But as a reminder, the teams in the Raleigh regional are as follows. The host team, NC state, South Carolina, James Madison and Bryant. Now, South Carolina will first take on JMU in the first game of the regional. This is at Friday at 02:00 p.m. and then from there you have to wait for the result of the other first game and that will determine who plays who. But the next round will be Saturday, and then depending on how things shake out from there, you'll have the regional either ending on Sunday or Monday, of course, sort of depending on the results. Right? Monday, I think is one of those if needed types of games. And of course, like, it can be a little tricky with the double elimination and you can certainly recover if the opening round doesn't go well. But South Carolina needs to get out there and take care of business from the start, right? Like you look at the bracket and you can sit there and say, well, you do have a little bit of margin of error here. You know, it's not exactly single elimination the whole way, but you need to go out there and put your best foot forward. And I think from what we've seen from this team, it's maybe it's not quite the perfect word, but this team, they're streaky. We've seen them get a couple of wins under the, under their belt and then they play good baseball, even if maybe they've come up just short. Right looking at most recently in the SEC tournament. But they were playing well. They got there. They needed to get on the right path.
[00:11:48] Alternatively, we've also seen this team play some bad baseball for stretches.
[00:11:54] So this team really doesn't have much margin of error because although they have shown some bounce back, they also have shown that if things don't go well once, sometimes it, it can have a little bit of a snowball effect here. But looking at the Gamecock's first opponent, JMU goes into things sitting at 34 and 23 overall, the Dukes did have several matchups with power five opponents, including Arkansas. Actually, they played Maryland a couple times, Virginia Tech as well. And maybe this is just a simple brain of mine, but when you consume so much college athletics and so much sports in general, I have to find what is something that I can equate this to, right? Like looking at Carolina play as many teams as they do with a large chunk of it. Being in the SEC, my brain goes to, well, how do we look against common opponents? And when you're looking at a team like JMU from a smaller conference, the one thing that I always try to look at is how did they perform against the Power five?
[00:13:08] Not that there's any science behind that, but when you look at it, they lost most of the time. JMU played Arkansas, I think it was four times, and Maryland twice. I think it was like six or seven games against power five teams, and they lost all, but I think two of them.
[00:13:28] But just like in the NCAA basketball tournament, when you do play some of these schools from smaller conferences, you know, they tend to be playing well at the right time of the year. Sometimes there's a wrinkle of a type of player you're not used to seeing, but I at least like to say, okay, well, generally speaking, when they've played superior talent, you know, things have gone the other way. So something to keep in mind. But, you know, the Gamecocks are also coming off a week where they played incredibly well and battled through adversity, and the team's mentality really should be in the right place when you think of it. Now, as of recording this, as I sit here and talk to you all, I don't have official word. I haven't seen anything officially on Gavin Cassis and his injury, but it was not looking good. And all the quotes that you heard from players or coaches like about him, what he means to the team and everything like that moving forward, it didn't sound good either. So likely that the Gamecocks will be down a veteran hitter and a guy who I really like in the lineup, for what that's worth.
[00:14:45] So you're going to have some adversity going into this regional. And speaking of adversity, you know, the defense, defense was a problem in the SEC tournament and clutch defense on top of that, too.
[00:15:01] But hopefully with a few days off, the guys have gone through some work to get over some of the issues that have plagued them.
[00:15:11] And I know that there's fans and, you know, discourse who think maybe you can sub out some people or maybe you can take a guy out of the lineup and, you know, that's a big decision and that's one that Mark Kingston has to make and he has to live with. If I am making the call, I'm probably leaning towards, you know, your veterans, the guys have, who have gotten you to this point, who have shown that they can make some of these corrections and who can be clutch hitting the ball.
[00:15:43] I would probably lean offense over defense in this situation here. But also, hopefully this pitching staff took full advantage of the time off and fully recovered. They were stretched so, so thin in the SEC tournament, especially the way that South Carolina had to get to those semis, but also because they're going to be asked to do a lot this weekend. You know, you're playing a lot of baseball. It's high leverage baseball. You're going to need to go out there and perform. Guys in these situations sometimes are asked to do a little bit more. If you're pitching well, you might ask to go another inning third, whatever it may be longer. You have to be ready to do that.
[00:16:29] But as I talked about last episode, you know, this draw going to the Raleigh regional feels like, at least on paper, a more advantageous grouping for South Carolina compared to some of the other regionals. Right? But again, it all starts with how the team plays against JMU, and this is a team in South Carolina and a program that has hopes and expectations every year of making a post season run.
[00:17:06] And Mark Kingston, frankly, he hasn't shut up about how some of the lower seeds or how some teams struggling in the SEC lately have gotten hot and have been able to make runs deep in the postseason. So now's the time, right? We've heard a lot of talk from this program about we got to get guys, right? We got to get guys going. Don't count us out. You know, we've seen teams in the past limp into the post season, but get hot at the right time and make a run. Well, hey, you kind of showed us that in the SEC tournament, had a fantastic showing there is this team heating up at the right time.
[00:17:51] Also this regional. You know, my understanding is that the ballpark is very hitter friendly. So hopefully guys like Moose and Petri can really, you know, lead from the front, so to speak, and bring this lineup along.
[00:18:05] And so really, my crow to the regional here. How about that? The team needs to play complete baseball because we've seen time and again one or two things be great while one or two things are not good. So for this team to excel in the regional, we need to see good hitting, good pitching, and good defense each and every outing. But I believe in our team. I believe in Gamecock baseball. So let's root the boys in. It's the regionals. Get excited. We'll figure out the rest later, but let's go as deep as we possibly can in the post season and let's see what happens. Let's make some noise. Absolutely love it. 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.
