The one area Mark Kingston still needs surging South Carolina baseball to improve

Not a whole lot has gone wrong for the South Carolina baseball team since an eye-opening loss to Presbyterian on April 17. The Gamecocks, emerging from a new low that evening, have come on to win six of their past seven games, including five against ranked SEC opponents.

USC, now 26-18 overall and tied for third in the SEC East Division, is firmly in NCAA tournament discussion and is inching closer to a spot in Baseball America or D1Baseball.com’s top 25. A red-hot offense has combined with a stout bullpen to start changing the narrative on Mark Kingston’s first season in Columbia.

But the rising Gamecocks of the past two weeks haven’t been perfect. The coach realizes this. There’s still a crucial element of the game Carolina is concerned with as No. 3 Ole Miss comes to town Friday.

“Our starters need to be much better than they’ve been, much better if we’re gonna finish this thing strong here at the end,” Kingston said Monday on 107.5 The Game’s “Halftime Show.” “Because you have to have good starting pitching. Most successful teams are sustained with great starting pitching.

“Our offense has taken that step back to where we think it can be. Our defense has been great, our bullpen has been very solid. So it’s now it’s up to the starting pitchers to do what we all think they can do, so that we can be a complete thing here down the stretch.”

South Carolina took two of three at No. 17 Vanderbilt over the weekend. It rallied from seven runs down to top the Commodores, 8-7, on Friday. It rallied from being four runs down to beat them, 10-9, on Sunday. In between was an 8-1 loss Saturday.

USC relief pitchers in Nashville: 17 innings, six earned runs (3.18 ERA)

USC starters in Nashville: Nine innings, 18 earned runs (18.00 ERA)

Junior righty Adam Hill, a one-time National Player of the Week, gave up seven Vandy runs in 4 1/3 innings. He’s 4-5 with a 4.94 ERA. Hill’s rotation mates are 6-3 with a 4.70 ERA (Cody Morris) and 3-0 with a 4.53 ERA (Logan Chapman).

“We just need to figure out how to help them finish strong and have their best outings of the year here at the end,” Kingston said. “It’s not for them not trying, but it just hasn’t gone as well as everybody thought it would. (Carolina pitching coach) Skylar (Meade) will work tirelessly all week with those guys to try to make sure they pitch their best baseball here at the end.

“Sometimes it’s a confidence thing, sometimes it’s a mechanical thing, sometimes it’s how you’re calling pitches. At the end of the day, those guys need to do a better job of getting ahead of hitters with command. The command both outside the strike zone, but also in the strike zone, has to be better for all those guys.”

Despite the struggles, USC has found ways to win. The comebacks in Nashville came a week after it beat 19th-ranked LSU on April 22 after it got down 6-0 in the fifth inning.

“I think we’re to the point now where our guys have seen us do it time and time again,” Kingston said. “And you wonder what comes first – confidence or success? I think as you start to have success, then the confidence is real. You’re not just trying to manufacture it, you’re not just trying to tell guys, ‘Hey, we can do this.’

“Once they have done it, then it becomes true confidence and you start to sense a dugout that knows they’re good enough to come from behind. To me, that’s the big thing."

This story was originally published April 30, 2018 at 4:49 PM with the headline "The one area Mark Kingston still needs surging South Carolina baseball to improve."