Ray Tanner was a terrific college baseball coach.

His teams won back-to-back national titles and almost did it a 3rd time. When it comes to evaluating and coaches, his record is spotty.

He inherited Dawn Staley from his predecessor Eric Hyman, although he has managed to keep the winningest Gamecocks’ women’s basketball coach ever.

In my humble opinion, his most dismal pick is the head football coach.

Will Muschamp is a likeable fellow, but he’s coming off an 8-loss season and the team’s prospects for doing much better this fall don’t send anyone into rapture.

What lies behind

The highlight of last season was upsetting Georgia between the hedges, but his team lost to weaker North Carolina and Appalachian State teams. The only other 2 SEC teams he beat were Vanderbilt and Kentucky. He lost to 5 other SEC teams plus, as expected, Clemson.

His team gave up 313 points and only scored 269 against their opponents.

Their average score per game was 22 points against opponents’ average 24.

That may not sound like much, but the Gamecocks gave up 38 points to Florida, 41 to Tennessee and 47 to Alabama. They had dismal 4th quarters, showing fatigue and being emotionally drained. The teams’s conditioning sucked as many NFL-quality players suffered injuries through the year.

What lies ahead

This fall’s schedule looks at best like a 5-7 season, not good enough for a bowl bid and maybe not good enough for another year for Muschamp at Carolina.

Muschamp has said he doesn’t care what people think outside of his program. But, what top high school prospects think of playing for him ought to worry him.

CBS’s Power 5 head coach rankings put Muschamp 45 among the 65 coaches, a drop of 10 spots from last season. He’s between Purdue’s Jeff Brohm (44) and Indiana’s Tom Allen (46).

Muschamp came in 11th among 14 SEC head coaches, ahead of only 1st-year coaches Sam Pittman (Arkansas) and Eliah Drinkwitz (Missouri) whose App State team beat South Carolina last year and Derek Mason, who is 27-47 at Vanderbilt.

The Gamecocks are coming off their worst year with Muschamp, losing 5 of their last 6 games.

Muschamp is 26-25 at South Carolina, having reached bowls in his first 3 seasons. But not last year and probably not this one either.

Ok, so he’s coaching at a school in a small state. He has to go outside its borders to recruit top talent.

So does Dabo Swinney at Clemson and look what he and his team have done.

What’s your opinion of Muschamp or the Gamecocks’ future? Email Chroniclesports@yahoo.com .