The national opinion of Mark Kingston's Gamecocks? Up. Way up.
Three weeks ago South Carolina baseball was 20-17 following a home loss to a Presbyterian squad with a losing record in the Big South.
The Gamecocks seemed like a long shot, at best, to make the NCAA Tournament, and missing the SEC Tournament was a real possibility.
That certainly isn’t the case anymore.
South Carolina has won three consecutive SEC series against top 20 teams and is now 13-11 in the conference. The Gamecocks are tied for fourth in the SEC and are projected to be a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament after not even being in the discussion for a postseason bid about a month ago.
“Everybody had pretty much left this team for dead, including me, including the D1Baseball staff,” D1baseball national writer Aaron Fitt told The State. “After that Arkansas series and the Presbyterian loss we didn’t even have them on our board as a bubble team. So for them to come back and show that kind of fight and sweep LSU and win a road series at Vandy, it just shows a lot about this team’s character. They didn’t roll over when they could have and everyone expected them to, so give them credit for that.”
D1Baseball has the Gamecocks as a No. 2 seed in the Clemson Regional in their latest projections. And South Carolina is on the cusp of being ranked in the D1Baseball top 25, according to Fitt.
Hot hitting has been the key to South Carolina’s turnaround as five players with at least 30 starts are hitting better than .300, including Justin Row (.355), Madison Stokes (.346), TJ Hopkins (.339), Jonah Bride (.329) and LT Tolbert (.306).
All of those players are veterans that were a part of last year’s team that missed the NCAA Tournament.
“This is the team we thought they were going to be, a veteran team that turns in a lot of quality at bats,” Fitt said. “Some of those guys are playing the best baseball of their careers right now. Hopkins for sure. The quality of his at bats has gotten a lot better as he’s matured. The same for Row and Hunter Taylor. Those guys, this is as well as they’ve ever played in college. That’s the thing that we’re seeing is renewed confidence and really good competitive at bats up and down the lineup.”
Fitt gives Mark Kingston a lot of credit for South Carolina’s improved hitting.
The Gamecocks are hitting .277 as a team this season after finishing at .260 last year, and USC already has 61 home runs in 48 games after recording 58 in 60 games a year ago.
“He can really coach hitters. And Mike Current. Those guys do a really good job with that stuff. Their teams have always had good approaches, at Illinois State and at South Florida,” Fitt said. “I think they deserve a lot of credit. One of the things that impresses me too is this was a team, they talked in the fall about wanting to hit for more power and the launch angle thing, and I was expecting the strikeouts to kind of surge. But they’ve done a good job of actually cutting down the strikeouts. They still have some power but I think they’re tougher outs than they were before.”
USC has gone from being out of the NCAA Tournament discussion to being in great shape with a pair of SEC series remaining.
The Gamecocks have an RPI of 43 and are on pace to return to the postseason, after missing out two of the past three years, barring a collapse down the stretch.
“At this point it almost feels like a lock unless they go out and get swept a couple of times here,” Fitt said. “If they lose back-to-back series they might be back on the bubble, but right now sitting at 13-11 in the league with a RPI around 40, they’re in good shape, especially since they’re playing good baseball. At this point it’s easy to envision them getting to 16 or 17 conference wins.”
This story was originally published May 10, 2018 at 11:40 AM with the headline "The national opinion of Mark Kingston's Gamecocks? Up. Way up.."