Muschamp addresses potential staff changes, what's hindered progress
SOUTH CAROLINA GAMECOCKS FOOTBALL
With the Gamecock offense stagnating to end the year, Will Muschamp is expected to stick with Bryan McClendon as the Gamecocks’ play caller with no potential staff changes until after the season.
Muschamp was asked in his Tuesday press conference about making changes to his staff and said, like in years past, those won’t happen until the Gamecocks are done playing for the year.
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“I’ll evaluate the staff when the year’s over,” Muschamp said. “Just like I always do.”
FootballScoop had a report Monday afternoon Muschamp is expected to be back as the Gamecocks’ head coach in 2020 but is facing pressure from some higher ups to make changes to his staff before the start of next season.
Tuesday, Muschamp said those reports aren’t accurate.
“That’s absolutely false,” he said. “No one has said anything to me about staff changes.”
GamecockCentral spoke with sources in the program for a look at what the future of the program looks like here.
Coming off a 20-15 loss to App State Saturday, the Gamecocks are 4-6 and need to win their next two games—at Texas A&M and home against Clemson—to make a bowl game.
A loss in either or both of those games would mean missing a bowl game for the first time under Muschamp and the first losing regular season record since 2015 when they went 3-9.
If they don’t beat Texas A&M, they’d finish 3-5 in the SEC, their worst conference record since finishing 3-5 in 2016, Muschamp’s first season.
On Sunday, Muschamp said he feels like he has the support of both athletic director Ray Tanner and university president Bob Caslen, saying he thinks progress is being made in the program.
Tuesday he said there is progress being made, but inconsistency this season has limited the progress they hoped to make in year four of the Muschamp tenure.
“This is a results business and it’s about winning game at the end of the day. We haven’t won enough games and that’s the bottom line. The main progress that needs to be made is winning football games,” Muschamp said. “We haven’t made that progress. Over a three-year period of time this staff’s won more games than any staff in school history. So we actually have done a couple good things around here, OK? We have had a very inconsistent year. I’ll continue to evaluate that to make the decisions we need to make moving forward.”
Offensively, they’re averaging 20.9 points against FBS opponents this year and haven’t scored over 30 points against a FBS team since putting up 35 against Clemson last year.
Over their last 10 games against Power 5 teams, they’re 3-7 with wins over then-No. 3 Georgia, Kentucky and Vanderbilt.
Tuesday, Muschamp urged fans to still stay engaged and still support the program, the players and the coaching staff.
“We’ve had, in our first three years, a lot more success than anybody else has. We haven’t played as consistent as we need to and there are things we need to address as we move forward. Continue to support these players and what they do. We have another home game and we need two wins to get to a bowl game. We’ve had some success here before other people haven’t and we look forward to a long tenure at South Carolina.”
