Mark Kingston’s message to Gamecocks after being swept by Georgia
When Georgia baseball’s Emerson Hancock stepped on mound Friday night at Founders Park and fired a 97 mph fastball across the plate, it was a sign of things to come all weekend for South Carolina.
For the first time in nearly six years, the Gamecocks were swept at home this past weekend, with the top-10 Bulldogs cruising Friday and scraping out a pair of close victories Saturday and Sunday. And throughout those the three games, UGA’s pitching displayed impressive firepower.
Coming into the weekend averaging 7.76 runs per game against nonconference play, Carolina managed just 3.33 per contest against the Bulldogs. USC’s hitters struck out 41 times and collected just 17 hits in three days.
“I told our hitters, this is big-boy baseball in terms of the pitching they faced,” South Carolina coach Mark Kingston said. “And so guys that have swings that might be a little bit long, you got a really good lesson in how to make the adjustments this weekend. If you’re going to be beating pitching staffs that have guys averaging 96 mile-an-hour fastballs, there’s a certain type of swing (you need), and they got a taste of that firsthand.”
The Gamecocks’ pitching, meanwhile, was solid but simply not on the level of Georgia’s hurlers — every day, the Bulldogs trotted out at least one pitcher who could average in the upper 90s on the Founders Park radar gun. USC’s staff topped out at around 93 to 94 mph. The Gamecocks’ best pitcher of the early season, junior Reid Morgan, struggled with command and was tagged for four earned runs in four innings.
“We saw that a big-time SEC pitching staff has a ton of power arms that Georgia threw at us. So we just gotta continue to work on our pitching depth,” Kingston acknowledged. “We’re not at full strength because of some injuries. For the most part, we could have won two out of three in that series. We didn’t. At the end of the day, you are what your record says you are. We didn’t win those games. But we have to have growth, like we did last year.”
As Kingston also said, Georgia will be one of the best teams South Carolina faces all season and a College World Series contender. But looking ahead, the Bulldogs’ pitching is far from the only elite staff the Gamecocks will face in the SEC this year — next weekend’s opponent, Tennessee, ranks in the top five nationally in ERA and WHIP, while future opponents Mississippi State, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt are all currently top-five in strikeouts per nine innings.
Still, the most important message Kingston had for his team after Sunday’s sweep was less technical and more mental.
“The message was, treat success and failure the same. When we had a big series a couple of weeks ago (against Clemson), people were patting us on the back. Now I’m sure people will wonder what’s going wrong,” Kingston said. “You’ve gotta treat those two imposters the same.”
NEXT
Who: No. 24 South Carolina (14-6, 0-3 SEC) vs. Furman (5-12, 0-0 SoCon)
When: 6 p.m., Tuesday, March 19
Where: Fluor Field, Greenville
Watch: Streaming online on SoCon Digital Network
Listen: 107.5 FM in Columbia
