How USC's five seniors bought in to Mark Kingston — and fueled the Gamecocks in 2018
Among college baseball’s elite programs, seniors typically make up just a small portion of a team’s roster.
With MLB rules allowing players to turn professional after their junior season, student-athletes with three or four years of experience under their belts aren’t exactly a rarity, but they’re not plentiful either. Among the 25 teams in the latest D1Baseball.com rankings, the average number of seniors and redshirt seniors per team is 4.72, with powerhouses like Florida, Texas and UCLA having no more than two.
And the seniors on those teams aren’t all regular contributors, as the best players on the squad are usually top prospects who go pro at the first opportunity, which means that the five seniors South Carolina honored Saturday before playing Missouri, all of whom play consistently, are something of an anomaly — and a large part of why the Gamecocks are in the hunt for an NCAA Tournament berth, according to coach Mark Kingston.
The last time USC had this many seniors who played with regularity was in 2013, before any of the current seniors were on the roster, so redshirt senior first baseman Matt Williams’ only frame of reference is the 2014 team, which had plenty of juniors who would then go pro.
“Guys leave early. That's very, very common. I don't know if we've ever, since I've been here — maybe my freshman year where we had Tanner English, Grayson Greiner, Joey Pankake, I think those guys were juniors maybe. But that class had a lot of guys leave at the same time and they had a lot of contributors who were upperclassmen, so it kinda reminds me of that class a little bit,” he said.
Williams and his fellow seniors, third baseman Jonah Bride, second baseman Justin Row, infielder Madison Stokes and catcher Hunter Taylor, have all appeared in at least 32 games this season and account for nearly 45 percent of the team’s hits and more than 40 percent of the squad’s home runs.
And they’ve especially been on a tear as of late, entering Wednesday’s game against College of Charleston hitting a combined .391. Each one is currently on pace for a career year.
“This year, the guys, the seniors, especially lately, it's been awesome. We've all been clicking and trying to be good leaders,” Bride said. “Having us all together, we've been able to play with each other three years ... we've all been together, we know we can all get it done at a given point. This group of guys, these seniors, it's a great group.”
That the seniors have been successful at all is noteworthy given the arrival of Kingston before this season.
“As a new coach coming into the program, the relationships with seniors can be very unique,” Kingston said. “It can be one of, the coach feels like, ‘Well, you're not going to be here a year from now so I'm not going to invest much time in you,’ and the seniors can kinda feel the same way. There's been none of that here.”
Once the seniors took to Kingston's approach and messages, he said, their attitude echoed through the rest of the locker room because of the respect the veterans command, making his job that much easier.
For Williams, the key to accepting and working with Kingston was a summer meeting arranged by former coach and athletics director Ray Tanner between several players and the new coach.
"He just sat us down, and he had six or seven players and coach Kingston, and we just sat in a room and talked for like an hour, just talked about baseball philosophy and what he believes and how things have been run here and just different stuff," Williams said. "After that, that gave me some confidence moving forward. After that meeting, I just let him lead the way and put my trust in him."
With that buy-in, Kingston and USC entered the season with high expectations, despite missing the NCAA Tournament two of the past three seasons. The Gamecocks stumbled early, though, with a 20-17 start that made the postseason seem unlikely. It was the confidence and experience of the older players, Stokes said, that allowed the team to bounce back and win three consecutive SEC series.
"We knew we had great potential starting out this year and then we started out pretty poorly, but we just knew, the seniors and experienced guys, we knew we could pick it up because we knew what we were made of," Stokes said.
This weekend series with Missouri will mark the final three-game set for the seniors at Founders Park, but while they acknowledged there may be some emotional moments during the Saturday pregame ceremony honoring them, the obvious hope is that there's a lot more baseball to be played, as long as the Gamecocks can keep on racking up SEC wins.
"We've spent four years here, and I'm sure we'd all love to go out on top at home with a big victory that will definitely help our season out," Taylor said. "I think in the back of our heads (the emotion) is going to be there, but at the same time when we get out on the field, that goes out the window, because we know we need to win a game. It's a huge weekend for us."
This story was originally published May 12, 2018 at 9:28 AM with the headline "How USC's five seniors bought in to Mark Kingston — and fueled the Gamecocks in 2018."