Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] On this episode of Cox Talking Gamecocks, softball begins their regional. Baseball wraps up the regular season and a wish list for the football season. Okay, here we go.
[00:00:55] Okay.
[00:00:56] Welcome to episode three, 389 of Cox Talking Gamecocks. I am your host, Tim Cox, where I will keep every episode from 1801 to 2001. Hope y' all had a great week out there. Gamecocks ready for the weekend, A big weekend for your boy. I'm going to be celebrating my birthday, and I always like to bring a little diva energy to that weekend. You know, like to be the center of attention, if you couldn't tell. I, you know, like to talk a lot, and I like to have some attention on me. So, yeah, looking forward to that. Outside of that, though, really enjoying the playoffs that are in full swing and professional sports. You got the PGA Championship this week, and there's just really much. Anywhere you look, there are some exciting sports going on. And even without that, we're going to talk to, you know, talk about in a second here, like, there's still plenty to talk about, Gamecocks wise. Even without that, we're going to touch on football recruiting and things like that. So, yeah, nonetheless, here. Hope you all are excited for a big weekend as we are really marching to summer here.
[00:02:03] Pretty exciting stuff here, but let's jump into it. Got a few things to cover. It is that time of year where a lot is wrapping up, but there's still some action on both diamonds that we are diving into. Starting off with the softball team. So last we spoke, they had been eliminated early in the SEC tournament. Disappointing effort there. Disappointing appearance in the SEC tournament. But there was life after death for this team as they were elected to go to the Los Angeles regional. Tough draw. It was a tough draw. I talked about before the selection of. When you look at the out of conference schedule, or record, rather, excuse me, the out of conference record for this softball team, it's actually pretty strong. And that is really what buoyed them throughout the year, flirting in and out of the top 25, being in the regional and things like that. It was really in SEC play where the ladies struggled. So I am curious how this regional goes, and I'm optimistic.
[00:03:15] But as I said, it is a tough draw going out to la, going against the host team, very accomplished program in ucla. So the regional is as follows. Going from the top seed down. So it's ucla, then South Carolina, Cal State, Fullerton, and then Cal Baptist. So all California teams, minus the real USC in South Carolina, Carolina, coming In at a seven seed, the ladies kick off the bracket on Friday. It's going to be 7:30pm going against Cal State Fullerton. So y' all know how the regionals work. It is a double elimination, so we don't really know how it's going to shape up right now. We are the first game in the bracket, so if you don't win that first matchup, you do have an opportunity to play yourself to the finals. But. But you certainly want to win your first one and put yourself in a very advantageous position.
[00:04:14] So I hope that the ladies come in rested, you know, adjusted to the time and ready to take care of business against Cal State Fullerton. And then let's see. Let's see what goes from there, right? I mean, this team has had some fantastic games this year. They've had some games where they haven't looked themselves, but there's some good pitching, some good young players as well. So excited for this regional, excited to follow along and let's root them in. Let's let. Let's win ourselves a regional and just shake this whole thing up. And then, if I'm looking at the bracket correctly, I believe the winner of the LA regional would play the winner of the Tallahassee regional, led by Florida State and ucf there, but not going to get ahead of myself. Oh, Jacksonville State's in that one.
[00:05:00] Let's go Jack State. And let's go South Carolina. Let's have a Gamecocks v. Gamecock super regional. That'd be a lot of fun. But nonetheless, here, let's not get ahead of ourselves. One game at a time here. This is postseason play. Beat Cal State Fullerton.
[00:05:15] But yeah, sticking with the diamond here we are coming to a merciful end of a regular season for the baseball team, which is actually really sad because I think I've used that phrase like this season is coming to a merciful end. I think I've used that three times this academic year. I think I know I said it in basketball season. I just said it now for baseball, and it's likely I said it for football.
[00:05:46] It has just been a tough go at it, y'. All. I mean, my God, like the, the Big three men's sports has just been so hard to go through it. It has been a tough, tough stretch. And if you are still standing when this baseball season ends, like, more power to you, More power to us. Don't let anyone tell you that you are a bandwagon or fair weather when you are cheering for our teams, when they are good which will. It will come around, this ship will turn around.
[00:06:18] But yeah, it has been a tough, tough go at it. And it kept going on as the guys were swept in the last home series of the year to Alabama. Lost three games in a row against Alabama was a tough one there. And the last finale, the last game of the season at Founders was against Winthrop and that was Tuesday night and the guys lost Winthrop 5 to 2.
[00:06:47] So. And that's after another tough showing the week before that. So the guys are on a serious skid here, like really limping into this last series here, which is about to take place. It is Thursday through Saturday against Vanderbilt at Vandy.
[00:07:09] Vandy at the bottom of the sec. I, I don't. I think it's like one team doesn't make the SEC tournament. I think it's going to be them. Something like that.
[00:07:19] We'll see what the guys can do in this one.
[00:07:23] It's been a really, really sad end of the year. You know, there was a little bit of an excitement with the Monty Lee being named interim. You saw the guys play a little harder. They were more competitive at times. But at the end of the day, like, it just, it just wasn't there. And it's been a really tough year. Tough two years, really. And then you're seeing reports now coming out that Minary took away recruiting, like, you know, or like the heading up of recruiting. He took away that from Monty Lee. A guy that knows the state really well knows that. A guy that knows how to recruit that and gave it to the pitching coach. So it's just mismanagement and future state of the program is in massive flux. But regardless of how you look at it, like this season is going to end and we are getting a new coach. Like the Monte Lee chatter has been silenced.
[00:08:19] I, you know, they think there's some folks out there who still think he should be kept around in some capacity. I'm of the opinion at this point, like we need totally new everybody. You know, I think under some different circumstances, Monty Lee could have been the guy. I think maybe he was even brought on to maybe kind of be the guy.
[00:08:38] It just didn't work out with Kingston and then Minary. This was just, you know, he had, he had time, Monty Lee and you know, if this team got hot then he would have made a plenty case for himself, but he didn't. And the team is just lacking of a lot right now, you know, and they're still showing up. You know, they showed some life in some of these games, but there's been some moments and just stretches in this season where it's just been bad. And so I think you need totally new influx of leadership across the board.
[00:09:11] And Jeremiah Donati has talked about this. You know, he said he recognizes, I'm paraphrasing, of course, that this program means a lot to the university.
[00:09:22] There's pedigree, there's history.
[00:09:24] It is still one of the top jobs in college baseball, which is true.
[00:09:30] You know, like the program that we know and love is really not recognizable right now.
[00:09:36] But make no mistake about it, like these coaches who have dedicated their professional lives to coaching college baseball, like they understand what Gamecock baseball is and they know the passion that is there from the fans, what it means to the area, the resources that the university is willing to put behind it.
[00:09:58] I think Founders could use, you know, a little tweak here and there. Let's upgrade a couple of fan experiences there and let's like bring some juice and some extra excitement back to this program. And that will start when you hire what hopefully will be a home run, pun intended hire.
[00:10:19] But let's get through this last series. I would love to see the guys perform well in this. And then there is still the SEC tournament, which we don't know the draw yet, but that will be in Hoover next week and we'll see what the guys do from there. You know, I mean, let's just try and find some positivity at the end of this dark, dark tunnel that was this season and we'll go from there.
[00:10:45] But shifting gears here, shifting away from the actual sports, we're kind of doing it inverse to how I normally like to do it. But we're talking football here. Got a couple recruiting tidbits. Shane Beamer and this staff starting to heat up on the recruiting trail. May and June have tended to be good months for this staff. And I have a couple of commitments to report on here.
[00:11:09] Starting with offensive lineman Jackson Elston. Coming from Oxford, Alabama, he is a three star recruit. 64325.
[00:11:20] He is the 42nd ranked player in his state.
[00:11:25] Love continuing to attack the offensive line. And especially when we talk about a change of leadership on the offensive side of the ball and in the offensive line, coaching ranks like that position has been in flux. When you lost, you lost the coach and then you bring in Elliott and it's just, you know, it's impressive to continue to bring in some of these guys and just continue to beef up there. And then also followed up with a four star commitment here from JV and Robinson Wide receiver out of Pennsylvania. The Gamecocks won this recruiting battle over some pretty notable Big Ten programs. He is the 10th ranked player in the state of Pennsylvania, sitting at 62189. Coach Furry just continues to do well on the recruiting trail and I think players are going to see this new look South Carolina offense and be excited. So when you look at a recruiting class and you say, okay, there's already some good players there and then you can see some results on the field and then the guys are continuing to recruit well in the offseason, I think it's all going to come together nicely. Right now the Gamecocks are sitting in a top 30 class overall according to 247Sports. But they jumped up a lot, particularly with the commitment from Robinson. They jumped up. I think it was six spots from 36 to 30. So continuing to work, continuing to battle. But this staff continues to recruit at a high level, especially, you know, considering coming off a tough year. It is pretty impressive there.
[00:13:03] But I wanted to end on a little bit of a different segment here. You know, as we're getting into the off season and football is becoming the focus here.
[00:13:12] Going to continue to talk about that. Just different fun segments, players to watch out for and whatnot. But I figured it is my birthday weekend and you know, we're not talking potential deep play, you know, super regionals and things like that yet. So let's have a little fun with this thing. And I have some birthday wishes for this upcoming football season. I'm not gonna bore y' all with doing a wish for my millennial ass age, but I have three birthday wishes, right? So imagine three candles sitting in front of me.
[00:13:47] Nice birthday cake, maybe an ice cream cake. It's been hot out. And these are my wishes for this upcoming football season.
[00:13:56] First off, I want, I wish that the offense averages more than 33 points per game, 34 points per game.
[00:14:08] I would love for the South Carolina offense to average. I dug into this. That is not an obscure number. That would put South Carolina fourth in the SEC last year stats. Could you imagine that? I mean even averaging 33, 33.0 points per game will have put this offense fifth in the SEC in points per game. And I think that is going to be something that we absolutely need to see. From Kendall Briles for reference, past this past season, it was a miserable offensive year. The gamecocks averaged 22.6. That is God awful.
[00:14:54] So, you know, 30 was sort of this benchmark that we floated around with logins and whatnot. But we can go 33 or more per game.
[00:15:05] That would be absolutely lovely and it would take a burden off of so many, so many phases of the team there.
[00:15:14] Next up, my second wish here is for Dylan Stewart. I'd love Dylan Stewart to have double digit sacks.
[00:15:22] Last year his production went down a little bit. You can attribute that to a few things. He was battling injury towards the end of the year, really cut down his playing time. He also was the sole focus. There was no Kyle Kennard who was absolutely destroying the opposite side of the line for him. But third year in the program, now we've brought in some talent to help on opposite of him. Young players, transfer forward players. I think the interior of the defensive line is going to be better than it was last year. So I think he is primed to have an absolute great year. Put himself in position to be a top draft pick in the NFL, but also help us win some games. Last year he ended up with four and a half. His freshman year he had six and a half.
[00:16:07] So you're really not asking for that much more compared to his freshman year. But if Dylan Stewart can get 10 sacks, he is absolutely balling out. The defense is probably killing it behind him and it would just make life so, so fun for us Gamecock fans. And that's just the game wrecker that you expect from Dylan Stewart. And we've talked about it before, you have this trio of Harbor, Sellers and Stewart of three of the most critical positions on the field. Certainly Sellers and Stewart, right, like the two pieces that you need on either side of the ball.
[00:16:46] And I expect Sellers to have a bounce back year, especially with my first wish.
[00:16:53] And if Stewart can do that, it'll just take the burden off of some of the other players on the line and it'll also just put the whole defense in a position to really do some really great things. Because when you have that true sack artist, it makes the quarterback nervous, makes some errant throws.
[00:17:14] Some of these other guys are able to pin their ears back and get after it. So very excited and hopeful for this year for Stewie.
[00:17:22] And then my last wish here, a little more ambiguous, but I want to have a real clear running back one, a true bonafide RB one. It's been a little bit since we've had that, you know, we had Sewell and Fuller and Howell last year, you know, we had the Mario Anderson situation, you know, but it's been a while really since you had this bona fide RB1 bell cow back. He's your starter, he's getting the Lion's shares of the carry. Yeah, of course other guys are going to contribute, but that's the guy that you're expecting to have a good year. And this is where it gets a little ambiguous. I don't care who that is. I'm a big Matt Fuller guy. I've been saying his name for a while now. I don't care if it's him, Clark, August, Dave Howell. I don't care who it is.
[00:18:12] But somebody needs to emerge to the top of this group to give us that consistency that we have lacked over the last couple of seasons here.
[00:18:23] So three birthday wishes, even if two out of three come true, I'll absolutely take that.
[00:18:30] That's a good question there. I would say give me the points per game and Dylan Stewart if I had to prioritize those because if we're scoring that many points, it means the running back by committee is working. But nonetheless, that wraps up this episode. 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 podcast. I appreciate all y'. All Go Cox.
