Everything Mark Kingston said about South Carolina being selected to play in Raleigh Regional
After South Carolina learned it will be playing in the Raleigh Regional for the NCAA Tournament, head coach Mark Kingston met with the media to discuss his reaction and break down what’s next. Here’s what he had to say.
On being selected to play in the Raleigh Regional
“We’re just excited to go play and we were just ready to play anybody, anywhere. And so we’ll head to Raleigh. It’s a program we respect a lot. We saw (NC State) last year at this time. So now it’s kind of like a home and home regional. They came to us, now we’re going to them. So just very excited to start playing some NCAA postseason baseball.”
On if he’s gotten to watch any of the teams in the regional during the season
“Yeah, very little. ESPN plus now allows you to watch a lot of games. And a lot of times I’ll go home after our games. And the way I decompress is I watch other teams stress out games and watch them on ESPN plus, so I have seen them throughout the course of the year. There are really good teams across the board.”
On playing James Madison in the first game of the regional
“We’ll have to do a lot of homework on them. And again, we don’t get to play NC State unless we win game one and NC State has to win their game. But we’ll focus on each of the three teams. And now it’s head to the office and start getting to work.”
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On if he expects the pitching plan in place from the SEC Tournament to continue this weekend
“We’ll see. We need to look at it. A lot of it has to do with matchups and is it a right-handed team, a left-handed team? We’ll look at all those things. And we’ll make the decisions we feel like give us the best chance to win each game.”
On how much confidence this team has after playing well in Hoover
“Yeah, I mean, this team should have a lot of confidence because they’ve taken on more challenges than anybody in the country. We played the 35 Quad I games, which is the most in the country, we’ve beaten just about everybody along the way, almost everybody. There’s still some more challenges ahead. But I think we showed this past weekend, we showed the world how good we can be at our high end. We still have some things to clean up, obviously. Our defense was not great in the tournament. But everything else I thought was at a level that can get us as far as we want to go. So we’ll work hard on all those things. If we play at the level we can defensively, pitch like we did this past week and swing the bats like we did against five great SEC teams in those games this weekend, we can do some good things.”
On how much the team works on defense in practice or if they don’t want to overemphasize it
“There’s a fine line that you don’t want to turn a thing into a bigger thing. But we will focus on the fundamentals, I promise you that we will review everything that matters. And we will get the guys the reps that they need. It’s a fine line, though, because we just had five grueling days in the heat there. And so we’re going to work on it enough so as to feel like we’re sharp, but we’re not going to do it so much to where guys are worn out. I was on the phone with another SEC coach that has had a lot of long runs in the SEC Tournament, and he’s gone on to have great NCAA Tournaments. And then sometimes where they felt like they were burned out by the time they got to the regional. So I’m very, very cognizant of the fact that I want our guys to be sharp. But we don’t want to work so hard over the next three days and forget that we just emptied the tank at the SEC Tournament. So there’s a fine line.”
On Gavin Casas and how he’s been doing
“Not an update, it’s still not looking great. But we’re going to try to exhaust all avenues and see if there’s a chance, but it’s not looking great at this point.”
On how Casas’ absence impacts the defense at third base
“Yeah, I mean, he was our starting third baseman. So it’s a blow for us. But it’s got to be a next man up mentality. We’re more than a one man team. It takes all these guys to win games. And so we just have to support each other and pick each other up and find other ways to win games other than Gavin hitting a three-run homer like he did the other day. Just have to make the adjustments.”
On how he feels about the third base situation as it stands right now
“We just need guys to play well and play to their abilities. We have guys that can play well there but they need to do mentally, physically be there and be at the top of their game because we have the guys that can do it and whoever we play over there, they’ll be able to do it. It’s just a matter of them doing it.”
On if there are other candidates who could see time at third base this weekend
“Tyler Causey will get a lot of work there this week. He’s an infielder with a lot of power. He’s played first, second, third. He’s played all those positions. So he’ll get a lot of run there this week. When all is said and done, we’ll make the decisions we think make the most sense.”
On if the coaching philosophy changes at all or if it stays the same
“We played 30 Regular SEC season games, we played five games in the SEC Tournament, we’ve played the best of the best. And now we get to go outside the SEC, play a great ACC team and play some other teams that have earned their way into the NCAA Tournament. But what it takes to win in the SEC, in the manner we did especially this past week, that preparation is the same preparation you need to get to Omaha. So that won’t change.”
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On what it means to make another NCAA Tournament
“It’s what we’re supposed to do. Like that’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to get to the NCAA Tournament and give ourselves a chance to get to Omaha and obviously that’s the standard. We understand that and you want to get hot once you get to the NCAA Tournament. But our goal every year is to put ourselves exactly where we are right now. With the chance to win three games and then two games to go to Omaha.”
On if there was anyone on the pitching staff that surprised him over the week in Hoover
“Well, Roman, I thought the other day really gave us the spark that we needed, gave us a chance to win that game. The way he pitched, he can win in the postseason. Gainey’s Gainey. Good is Good. I thought Eli Jones has been a little better lately. There’s a lot of guys that I think can can help us win. It’s just a matter of trying to use them in the best way possible.”
On if he feels better about the pitching now compared to the end of the regular season
“Well, certainly, I mean, we pitched much better this past week now. And there’s a lot of factors that go into that. It’s who you’re playing, when you’re playing. It’s where you’re playing them. It’s how are your guys performing. But I thought our pitchers reacted and bounced back very well. As much as the ball was flying on Hoover, we set an all-time record for home runs out there. The LSU games, obviously, we didn’t pitch as well as we wanted, but defense had something to do with that. But in the other games, I thought we picked pretty damn well. And if we pitch well, we’re obviously scoring runs right now in a manner that can win a lot of games.”
On if there was anything that stood out for why the defense made so many errors in Hoover
“Look, sometimes it just happens. Sometimes you hit great, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you play great defense, sometimes you just get into a little bit of a rut. It is what it is. And our guys will come out ready to go again. We field .979, which is good as we’ve ever done in this program in the SEC. So sometimes it just happens.”
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