Coming July 2011, a slightly modified logo, horrible music, and embarassing dancing. All courtesy of the new PAC 12.   

This pales in comparison to that horriffic “Party in the UGA” recruitment video from last year, but still…

Note:  “Tusings” = Tuesday Musings.  I just made that up, and you’re welcome.  (Even though I posted this on Wednesday, I thought of it on Tuesday, smart guy.)

So, I was doing my daily lunchtime web surfing over a turkey sandwich today and came across this curious article on collegefootballnews.com called “CFN SEC Bloggers: 5 Thoughts on USC’s Spring”.  CFN has come quite a ways in the last couple of years, and while no bastion of cutting-edge sports journalism, there is occasionally an interesting article or two.

Today’s was not one of them.  Let me begin with the work of Brian Harbach, who writes:

“The media in the state of South Carolina could be described as the proverbial ostrich with their heads buried in the sand. They ignore facts and do their best not to ruffle the feathers of the Head Gamecock when discussing the obvious uncertainty at quarterback.”

Um…run that by me again?  What did I miss?  Seriously, and I’m not kidding here, have the South Carolina beat writers and opinionators sucked up to the OBC and I’ve missed it?  I’ve been out of the state for thirteen years, and out of Columbia for more than twenty, but all I’ve ever heard is how much the media HATES the University of South Carolina and wishes it would die.

Now sure, you get the group of reporters gathered around Spurrier with their tiny recorders after practice giggling with glee at every word SOS speaks.  But don’t you get that at about every major university with coaches and reporters?

Name some names Bri, I’m curious.  Otherwise, grab yourself a plane ticket and come on down and ask the man the tough questions yourself.  You apparently owe it to us.

Later on a guy named Russ Harris tackles the hard-hitting topic of “will success breed complacency in Columbia”:

“What success? With five – yes, five – losses, we can safely debate if South Carolina or Charlie Sheen had more winning in 2010/11.”

Congratulations Russ, you’re the 10,000th blogger to get a cheap pop off making fun of South Carolina football!  And bonus points for tying in current events!

By the way, I can think of at least five teams that would’ve loved to have five losses in fourteen games in 2010.

Finally, Barrett Sallee chimes in “on how bad this team would be without Marcus Lattimore”:

“In a word… bad. In two words… really bad.”

Again, maybe I’m out of the loop, but has the word bad been redefined?  Granted, this was a different team last year with #21 on the bench, but really bad?  Come on Barrett, at least give us average, maybe even slightly above average.  This team was/is not completely devoid of other talent.

On to the Tusings:

• My final word on this latest Stephen Garcia incident: I don’t care.  I don’t even really fall on either side of the “hey, weren’t you 21 once” vs. “kick him off the team forever” argument.  For those of you who want to keep him, don’t worry, he will be under center at Bank of America Stadium come September.  For those who want him gone, too bad, you’ll have to wait one more year for Conner Shaw.  I’m just not going to argue with anyone about it.  I’m sure you’re relieved.
• I hear Darren Horn stated the basketball team must improve next year.  Phew!  For a minute there I was beginning to believe his agenda involved getting worse.
• I hate to even say this, but…anybody else a little worried about the baseball team?  Somebody has to step up at the plate besides Walker and Bradley.  And while Michael Roth has been stellar on the mound, this weekend committee stuff isn’t going to work come SEC play.
• Finally, non-Gamecock related, people are doing back flips over this Grant Hill response to Jalen Rose’s comments in the “Fab Five” documentary.  But I think Hill is missing the point – I believe Rose was telling us what he thought at the time as an 18-year-old kid, and in no way does he believe that today.
• Bonus:  “Fab Five” is a fun trip through the past if you haven’t seen it, but you have to take a lot of it with a grain of salt since it was produced by three of the five.  Jason Whitlock hits the nail on the head here about the revisionist history of that documentary and the cultural  impact of the Georgetown teams of the mid-80’s.

Go Mountaineers.  #beatclemson

We’ve found him, witness the photographic evidence from the Marriott Lounge:

Once again NCAA tournament time is here (the nation’s single greatest sporting event, IMHO), and once again the University of South Carolina is on the outside looking in. The good news in that is this – I can sit back and enjoy the splendor and the spectacle without all the hand-wringing and expletive shouting that comes along with watching Gamecock basketball.

It also means I can renew acquaintances with the best play-by-play man in the business, and the voice of the NCAA Tournament (sorry, Jim Nantz): Gus Johnson.

Johnson was able to get his pipes warmed up during the PAC-10 tournament this weekend, and during the final, in overtime, he was in top form.

Cold blooded indeed.

I watched that game, then went to YouTube and googled some of Johnson’s greatest NCAA moments -Gonzaga-UCLA, Vermont-Syracuse, Xavier-Ohio State and Gonzaga-Florida (“the slipper stillll fits!”) among others. Then I went to Twitter and saw that I was not the only member of the Gus Johnson fan club.

One tweet even suggest something I had never thought of – when Verne Lundquist retires, Johnson should take his place on the CBS Saturday afternoon SEC broadcast.

Brilliant idea, and I am 100% behind it.  Johnson brings the best balance of neutrality and excitement to his games that I have ever heard. He genuinely loves the games he has the pleasure to call.  Can you imagine him calling the 2010 USC-Alabama, LSU-Tennessee or Auburn-Alabama games?  Why not bring the most excitable man in the broadcast booth to the most excitable fan base in the country?

The naysayers will point out he has no connection to football in the South -he has been the voice of the Minnesota Timberwolves and New York Knicks in the NBA, the lead announcer for boxing on Showtime, and has done the NFL on CBS (if you’re concerned about his ability to call football, just watch this.)  I say who cares. The man can calls a great game and has no loyalties.

Others will say he’s TOO excitable. I will agree he pushed the boundaries on occasion with his wild screams, but in the end that only adds to the fun he brings to the broadcasts.

It will be a sad day when Verne hangs up the mike, but I can think of no better replacement than Gus Johnson.

KABOOM-YOW! [noise of our collective TRC snarky cynicism being dropped]:

Hey, Coach, just how deep are you in it?

Will Lamb finally gets a clutch hit against South Carolina and he feels compelled to call out a South Carolina player? 

Did he forget Omaha already?  Or that the Gamecocks have won 13 of of the last 19 from the Tigers? 

Maybe if somebody punched him in the face with one of these it would jog his memory.

 

As you have probably already seen, a report has surfaced that alleges there was good reason for Stephen Garcia’s three-interception performance during the December 31 Chick-fil-a Bowl. The late night scene in Garcia’s Atlanta hotel room apparently involved heavy drinking, and as many as FIVE women, two of whom may or may not have been clothed. We here at TRC are yet to solidify our public response, so here is where we are on the discussion at present:

Buck says – POINT – If the allegations are anywhere close to being true, the third strike for #5 just crossed the plate. Eric Hyman and Steve Spurrier need to stand together and send the message that this type of behavior will not be tolerated – AGAIN – and dismiss Garcia from the team. Running on a treadmill with a hangover is not punishment enough.

You are all familiar with the rocky path that has been the career of Stephen Garcia – the vandalism and underage drinking that led to arrests. How much is too much? After what he has been through, how could he make the conscious decision to do something like this before one of the most important games in recent memory? At what point do you stop waiting for someone to mature?

The upcoming football season has the potential to be the greatest in school history, but Stephen Garcia should not be a part of it. One football player should not be allowed to sully the good name of our beloved university the way he has done. Adios, Mr. Garcia.

Tbone says – COUNTERPOINT�- Let’s see, a starting quarterback for an SEC team is caught in a hotel room in the ATL with a bottle of booze and five women (two of which were reportedly naked). So, what’s wrong with this picture? I’ll tell you what’s wrong – what’s wrong is the three other women.

They were in the hotel room with Stephen Achilles Garcia for cryin’ out loud. He was in the hotel room because he just led his team to a 9-win season in the toughest conference in organized sport. The boy earned a little celebratory revelry.

What’s that? Such a debache is inappropriate on the eve of a Big Game, you say? I would be the first to agree with you-if it were a Big Game. No one is alleging that Garcia was with the “Marriott Five”on the eve of the SEC Championship. That would be different, and would betray a complete lack of focus and commitment from our leader.

But the Chicken Nugget Bowl? Who cares. Only two things can happen in the Chicken Nugget Bowl, and both of them are bad. You could lose the game, which counts on your final record I guess, but even worse, you could actually win the thing, and thereby run the risk of seeing a victory over an also-ran team from an also-ran conference as evidence of SEC-level superiority.

Hubris like that will get you beat. But a few girls and a bucket of barley-pops on the eve of kickoff shows you aren’t about to give in to that sort of hype. Good on you, Achilles.

Buck says – POINT– Seriously? Not a big game? We have won ten games once in our history. Getting to that tenth win on New Year’s Eve would have put Garcia in rarified air that neither Todd Ellis nor Steve Taneyhill even sniffed.  So it wasn’t a BCS game, but it was a big game for USC and for our program.  He could’ve waited one more day to get hammered and skank it up.

Tbone says – COUNTERPOINT�- I’ve got news for you: Garcia was up in the thin air the minute the clock hit triple zeros in the ‘Bama game. If not then, then he soared up above the others about the time the Gatorade hit the HBC in the Swamp. He’s probably going to finish behind Todd in career passing stats, but he’s gonna have championship hardware in our trophy case forever.  For that fact alone Garcia, warts and all, is a net gain for SC.

Oh, and I’ve got other news for you:  If five women knocked on your hotel room door (and you were SINGLE, of course) with a bunch of booze and stars in their eyes . . . well, I think we all know what we would all do.

Buck says – POINT�- First of all, if five women knocked on your door with a bunch of booze and stars in their eyes, you’d need to tell them they have the wrong room and point them to the Buckster’s suite.  And at that point I’d pass out rain checks for the following evening after my 300-yard, 4 TD performance.  Then we’d have a party.  That’s why I’m the conscience of this blog, because I’m a big picture guy and I want more “hardware” than an SEC East trophy in a down year.

Tbone says – COUNTERPOINT – The “Buckster Suite”?  Is that a pet name you’ve given to the all-you-can-eat buffet at Ryan’s?  Might wanna mix in a salad every now and then, big guy.  And SEC East was in a “down year?”  You wanna know why this was a “down year” for the East? ‘Cause Achilles had his way with the three big boys (Uga, UT, & FL) before he did the same with those ladies.  You’re just jealous because he’s got tiger blood and Adonis DNA, while you’ve stuck with possum blood and the genes of Cletus the Slack-Jawed-Yokel.

Buck says – POINT– That’s awfully tough talk from a girl-armed hillbilly lawyer that thinks an Oklahoma drill is a dress rehearsal for a musical.  Go knit another sweater, d-bag.

Tbone says – COUNTERPOINT – We’re not talking about an Oklahoma drill – we are talking about an Atlanta drill (or two).� And I’m not “girl-armed”; I’m lithe. No risk of you ever being described that way, lard-ass.

I watched the South Carolina basketball team again Saturday night, and for the first time this year I didnt really get angry at our team. I’ve finally come to the conclusion that this team, as I heard a football coach say once, is what it is.

Even though this season has been a disappointment, I come back to the question I keep asking myself every time I want to rail against Darren Horn and Co.  what did you expect? You lose Devin Downey from a bad team (that had already lost Dominique Archie and Mike Holmes) and you expect a bunch of roll players and freshmen to take up the slack? The NIT is/was truly our best and only hope for this year.

The blogosphere-slash-boardosphere is pretty much split on Horn  the give him more time crowd versus the cut bait and go after ____ crowd. I’m still on the fence in regards to Horn, and there is no doubt he will be back next year. But, unless we show significant improvement next year, we’ll be in the market for a new coach once again.

So, in light of the beautiful pre-spring weather we had on Sunday that put me in a good mood, I decided to think optimistically and look at what we had to do to reach that vague goal of significant improvement for Gamecock basketball in 2011-2012. Here are a few things I came up with:

• The maturation and health of Bruce Ellington many thought #23 was going to step in for Devan Downey and we wouldnt miss a beat. Early on he looked like he just might, but a slump combined with a lower leg injury have caused a precipitous drop in his production. We need him to be the man, and I truly believe he will be, because based on his body language and the fact he keeps jacking up shots, he doesnt lack in one thing many on our team do…
• CONFIDENCE – confidence is the most important intangible in basketball. It can make or break you at the D-1 level, and currently some of our players are completely devoid of it. The best example is Brian Richardson – the first part of the season had it and was knocking down threes, and when SEC play started he completely lost it. We need him to get it back, and that’s putting it mildly. On the flip side, R.J. Slawson and Damontre Harris started the season looking lost, but first Harris, and then Slawson, have come on strong in the last few weeks. They now know they can play at this level, and it shows. They will be key cogs in the middle next year, but will need help from some…
• Shooters – holy crap our shooting is bad. I love Lakeem Jackson and what he brings to the court, but he might be the worst shooter I have ever seen at this level. And Eric Smith has had his moments backing up Ellington, but he has to develop some semblance of a shot. Its hard to find even an average shooter on our team. We’re bad from long-range, medium-range, and have a terrible time . .
• Finishing around the basket – I’ve noticed this as much as anything this year, we have a terrible time finishing when we get in the lane. Granted, we have been spoiled the last few years  Tre Kelly and Downey were both excellent at getting in the lane and finding any way to get the ball in the basket. Ellington has not shown that ability, but hopefully will develop it. If he doesn’t we need some of our post guys to . . .
• Hit the weight room – we have a recent history of finesse post players. And by finesse I mean skinny as a rail. Slawson and Harris need to get on a program, and quick, because Anthony Gill is the only post player coming in, and he may be the skinniest of all. Maybe another scholarship will open up through . .
• Attrition –  I’m looking at you, Stephen Spinella. Let us have that scholly so we can go get a 6�9″ banger from the JUCO ranks. And speaking of newcomers . . .
• Damien Leonard – this guy could be the answer to our shooting woes. Lets hope he’s as good as advertised, because we don’t get to reload like Kentucky. Our freshmen and sophomores need to get a lot better, and our . . .
• Coaching needs to get a lot better (I think) –  Here’s the deal: I love Horn’s style of defense. Yes, we give up a few easy baskets every game, but for the most part I’m in favor of the pressure style he brings, particularly in the second half of games. The offense is a totally different story. I have no idea what he’s trying to do in the half court set, and if anyone does please comment or email me. All I know is we wind up with way too many one-on-one situations late in the shot clock, after a series of predictable high screens.

The bottom line is we need some guys to grow up fast, and a lot, over the summer. But more importantly, we need Darren Horn to show he is the coach many of us thought he was when he was hired. Time is running out.