Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] On this episode of Cox Talking Game Cox, three new head coaches are hired by the university. Football picks up several commitments, and the men's basketball team has an ACC team scheduled. Okay, here we go.
[00:00:57] Ok.
[00:00:59] Welcome to episode 249, cox Talking Game Cox. I am your host, Tim Cox, where I will keep every episode from 1801 to 2001. And wow, what a few couple of days, y'all. I mean, my goodness, what a week it has been. You know, of course I changed the podcast schedule up, and then all of a sudden, it's just like news, news, and I gotta wait until Friday to unpack it with y'all. But I guess that lets things, you know, kind of pile up, if you will. So, with that being said, a packed episode for y'all today, I'm going to jump right into things here. Two quick notes here. No podcast at all next week. So you're listening to this on Friday, maybe Saturday. There will be nothing. Next week, I'm going to be on vacation. And while I have traveled with my microphone and things like that before, I don't feel like getting hassled by TSA this go around. So taking a little bit of a break, summertime, but we'll be right back at it, I guess, in two Fridays from then. And then, just a little teaser out there. I am working on bringing back a guest that I have had on the show for an interview.
[00:02:18] Student athlete, first time recurring guest, possibly. Things are looking good, though, so would be very excited to talk to him later on in the summer here. But, yeah, let's jump right into things and kicking things off with my gamecock trivia calendar here for y'all. It's actually a fact today. So let's see what we got on this date. In 2018, former South Carolina women's basketball star Asia Wilson became just the second rookie in WNBA history to have 35 points and ten rebounds in a single game. Wilson joined WNBA legend Candice Parker as the only two players to accomplish that. Shout out Asia Wilson. How about that? Her rookie year, she goes out and does something that only one other person has done before. And, I mean, if it's a precursor, absolutely. I know the WNBA right now has a lot of eyes on it, which is fantastic. There's a lot of great players in that league. But Asia Wilson right now, if you ask me, is probably the face of the league, is probably the person who is the most consistent, the most exciting, and the most dynamic, right? Right now. You know what I mean? I know there's many different players on many different teams, but Asia has done it for long enough and she's accomplishing some really, really great things there. So shout out Aza Wilson. Absolutely. Shout out, gamecock, women's basketball national champs. National champs here.
[00:03:45] Let me dive into things here. So for a weekend review, like I said, all of a sudden there is a ton to review. It don't matter what sport you like to call your favorite, you probably were excited about something this week, honestly. Like, there was so much going on here and there's so much to be excited about. Social media has been popping off, articles have been popping off. Very exciting time to be a Gamecock now. So I'm just going to go sport by sport here and sort of building up to it all. So here we go. Starting with men's basketball here. Quick announcement. It was made public that the guys will take on Boston College in Boston as part of the ACC SEC SEC challenge this season. So going up to Beantown to take on the eagles there, that should be a pretty good game. And I mean, you're looking at this out of conference schedule that the men's basketball team has coming up, and it's pretty legit. So if nothing else, the committee, national pundits and everything cannot say that Lamont Paris is ducking any smoke or anything like that. You're playing Indiana, you're playing Boston College. You always play Clemson. You know, there's some. There's some good teams on the schedule, and that's outside of our conference, which has just been getting better and better and better. So very exciting there. I don't think Boston College is going to know what hit him. I really don't. I think Lamont's going to go up there and handle his business, but then moving on here to football, Shane Beamer has been absolutely rolling in the recruiting department, hosting lots of visitors, hosting camps, running around, doing a million things, tweeting. He's just like the mad tweeter all of a sudden. Welcome home, welcome home, welcome home. There's been so many put out there, although not all of the commitments are known right now. So here's what I think we have.
[00:05:46] Did my best to piece together the tweets and everything like that. So starting with three star Jaquel Holloman from Blackville, South Carolina, he is listed as an athlete, really on the defensive side here. I've seen that the staff thinks that depending on how he develops and how he fills out more, so that he's sort of a safety or maybe a linebacker. And if you remember correctly, that was kind of the description given to Nick Eman. Worry that depending on how this kid develops, how he builds out and things like that, you can kind of move him around a little bit. So you, you're getting a versatile player there. And then three star edge, Kobe Sakay pra butchered that name, probably, I'm sorry. Out of Roswell, Georgia, he's an edge rusher. Shane Beamer continuing to load up on the defensive line. Line of scrimmage continues to be a point of emphasis. And then three star defensive back Christopher Hatfield out of Georgia, he is listed at 63205. He's in high school, so that size is something to be excited about coming to the SEC, whether you're, I mean, that's huge for a safety, but you're big, you're long, you're strong. You can be a fantastic defensive back to go against some of the taller wide receivers that you tend to play against in this league. So I like that pickup there. And then three star Titan Preston Douglas out of North Palm Beach, Florida, seen a couple of clips from this kid.
[00:07:23] Very impressive. He has great hands and looks to be someone who really could develop to be a weapon there. And obviously we still are waiting on a few more commitments to become public. There's a couple of recruiting battles that I know are coming down to the wire, so get excited for that real quick. I've seen some people be a little bit of a Debbie Downer on these things, saying they're all three stars here. Look, not every class is going to be all four and five stars, right? You have your couple of premier guys. This class will continue to get those, but stars change. Some of these guys could end up four stars when they graduate and things like that, and also stop being Debbie Downer. Relax. There we go.
[00:08:10] But then moving on, moving on here to some big news. A lot of exciting news. Like I said, you got three head coaching searches that were going on simultaneously over the last week or so, and all three came to a conclusion this past week here. So going to go through those in order here, starting with the men's golf team. So, yeah, I mean, for those of you who were out of the loop, Ray Tanner and the athletic department were leading a search for a new men's golf coach, and the search ended with the hiring of Rob Bradley. Coach Bradley was previously the head coach at Purdue, where he led a very successful program. Really, you look at it, he had nine regional appearances, so made it to the postseason nine times in eleven years. So seems to be very established and should bring success to our team. I think something that Ray Tanner talked about especially with, you know, I guess really all these coaches. But, you know, getting to the post season is one thing.
[00:09:12] You want to excel and advance in the postseason, and I think coach Bradley brings the pedigree to do that. I liked what he said, that South Carolina is basically the golf capital of the country, one of at least. So it's a great place to come. It's a great place to expand and get better there. And it seems like there's going to be some more resources dedicated to both golf teams as well. So that's really exciting to hear. And then on the softball side of things here, the university parted ways with coach Bev Smith and held a search, albeit quick, for her replacement. And then Ray Tanner chose Ashley Chastain to be the next head coach for South Carolina. And this is just, this is fantastic. I mean, this is a homecoming to really just the definition of it when, when we say welcome home and coach Beamer tweets that it's fantastic, but this is what it's all about here. Ashley was a former player for South Carolina and a grad assistant for this program.
[00:10:16] If you haven't done so, I would implore you to go watch this press conference.
[00:10:23] She called this her dream job. And the emotions that she had around this job and being asked to come home and lead this program, you could just see it meant the world to her. She was choking up pretty much the entire time. She was answering questions and giving her statement, and that's what it's all about. I mean, any time that you're able to have one of your own come back and lead a program, it's just special. It really is. And when you see the emotions that she had talking about South Carolina, I think it just really, you know, exemplified what South Carolina means to many of us. And when you're able to go back there and, you know, do some really great things and she gets to have her dream job here. So a little bit background on coach Chastain here. For the last five seasons, she was the head coach for Charlotte, where she brought them to the postseason twice and had interest from other power five schools really the last couple of seasons here she got that team performing at a very high level. Last season she had Charlotte to their first conference tournament championship. And really, when you look at the SEC, you have Oklahoma and Texas coming to the SEC and it's going to make the conference ultra competitive, even more competitive than it was. And so when you looked at the softball program for the last few years, Bev Smith was a staple of that program. She was a staple at the university, been here for a very long time. We wish her well, salute her. But it did feel like that the program was a little stagnant and that postseason success was elusive and you needed to find a way to level up. And so I think Ashley Chastain will be the right person to lead this program forward. I think she's going to bring a fresh perspective. She's going to attack the portal really well. She's going to attack recruiting really well, and I think she's going to drive more nil interest for that program. So hopefully we continue to level up there because having a very reputable and good softball program would be a lot of fun. It would be. It'd be really, really exciting. And then if you can get both programs and the diamond rolling, that's awesome. That's what it's all about there. But speaking of the other program that plays on the diamond, with all the news that happened over the last week, and I know I just went through a lot, no piece of news was bigger than the conclusion of the search for our new baseball coach. The highly anticipated announcement, everyone scrolling and debating and things like that. And after a week of speculation and the rumors and the podcasts and everything else, it turned out that a mystery candidate at a left field was the man that Ray Tanner wanted all along. And he got his man. And so our new coach is none other than former LSU head coach Paul Mineri. And when I say a mystery candidate, I mean a mystery candidate. Nobody had this guy on their radar. The only time I saw his name anywhere about this search was about 24 hours before the board of trustees met to approve his contract.
[00:13:53] So shout out to Ray Tanner, because, you know, he was moving in silence, and he was able to keep a lid on that, really, until the very last second.
[00:14:06] And so with that, like any rational fan base does, Gamecock Nation properly freaked out when this news broke, some with excitement and some with hesitation.
[00:14:19] Truth of the matter is, you know, I don't think any candidate would have pleased 100% of our fan base. But it really was funny to see that instant reaction to this news because it was so unexpected.
[00:14:33] You're. Everyone's just like, wait, what? Who? What? This, that, whatever. Was really funny to see everyone putting the pieces together all at the same time, right? It wasn't this candidate who you had built up in your head as, okay, this guy will be really good, or this guy I could stomach. You just saw it. You're like, whoa, what? Him? What the heck? So who is Paul Mineri? And what are the Gamecocks getting? So, regardless of your stance of this hire, one thing is true.
[00:15:05] He has an elite resume as the head coach of two major programs. He's been to the College World Series six times. That's more than the major candidates who were rumored to be combined as the head coach for LSU. He went to the postseason 13 out of 15 years. He went to Omaha five times. He won the SEC multiple times, and he won a national championship. And he was also the national championship runner up another year. So went to the big dance twice, the big series twice.
[00:15:44] Again, he won a national championship.
[00:15:47] So what does all this mean?
[00:15:49] It means he's a winner.
[00:15:52] He comes to Columbia with a proven track record of winning in the SEC and doing so consistently and at a high level.
[00:16:02] He competed against some of the best teams South Carolina ever fielded. So he knows the standard and the potential that South Carolina has.
[00:16:12] He has a great relationship with Ray Tanner and knows that he is being hired by the Gamecocks to bring South Carolina to Omaha.
[00:16:23] Now, why are there some people who are not thrilled with this? Even though I think by the time you're listening to this, most people have come around, but there still are some people who are not thrilled.
[00:16:36] Well, Ray Tanner actually had to convince Mineri to come out of retirement for this job he last coached in 2021. So he has been out of the game for a few years, and there are concerns about him jumping into a world that has drastically changed since then. Nil transfer portal, all that stuff we love talking about.
[00:16:59] Also, some folks have brought up the fact that he is in his mid to late sixties. So some fans aren't thrilled with the notion of likely having to find a coach again in the not so distant future as he, you know, likely will retire sooner than later again. Right. That's fair. He's probably going to retire sooner than some of those other rumored candidates would have. This is not necessarily someone you could see. Leading your program for 15 years is basically the point of that. Ten years. Right.
[00:17:37] However, to the critics, I have to say one thing.
[00:17:42] Relax.
[00:17:43] Relax.
[00:17:45] Take a chill pill.
[00:17:48] Mineri's experience and track record need to be absolutely celebrated as huge, huge wins for Ray Tanner to bring to Columbia.
[00:18:00] He needs to get a pat on the back. He gets a lot of shit, Ray Tanner. So it's time to give him his flowers on this higher. This program, this baseball program here is in dire need of a firm hand who can bring a competitive edge. And this team needs to start winning at a very high level right away.
[00:18:22] We can't worry about what's going to happen eight or ten years down the line. I want to know what's going to happen in ten months. Right?
[00:18:32] I believe that Mineri checks off every major box you want in a head coach, and for him to come out of retirement for this job says a lot about, one, his competitive drive still being there, knowledge of the game, of course, and two, his thoughts on this program and its potential. Right now on his staff, he is building an elite group. First off, Monty Lee is staying on as the hitting coach. What a fantastic win for the fan base, our recruiting and our program.
[00:19:10] Then he's bringing over Terry Rooney to serve as the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator. Rooney, if you don't know, previously led recruiting and development at LSU, which for years has consistently brought in elite talent to their program. So now those philosophies and resources will be with Carolina, and then he's bringing in John Hendry to join the staff as an assistant, really with his expertise in pitching. So he's going to help out Rooney in that department and he's coming with very strong experience and a high reputation from Virginia.
[00:19:48] So look, yes, this hire was a bit of a surprise, and yes, maybe Boneri is more seasoned than some of the other rumored candidates, but the fact is every candidate had major concerns with their ability to win in the SEC or in the postseason or recruiting, and none of those are a concern with Mineri.
[00:20:16] He's gonna come in and be able to develop our players like they haven't before, or at least in a very long time. His staff is going to be able to recruit better than we have for a while, and the university will surely open up more resources to him.
[00:20:33] Side note, the Garnet Trust is running a promotion for baseball nil right now. Go check it out. You can just directly donate to the baseball program.
[00:20:44] So after sitting on this, I like this higher. I do.
[00:20:49] It may not be trendy or sexy, but Ray is turning to someone he knows to be a guy who can coach college baseball at an elite level, and he surely has given him a mandate that the objective is to get to Omaha, and both guys are not trying to wait around to do it.
[00:21:13] College baseball programs can be turned around in a relatively short time, and Carolina has some really good pieces in place already.
[00:21:22] Let Maneri get settled in and there could be some good times ahead for the Gamecocks. Be excited. I sure as hell am. But with that, 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.
