Two leading candidates atop South Carolina baseball coaching search, report says
South Carolina Athletic Director Jeremiah Donati is in the thick of finding the Gamecocks their next head baseball coach.
Donati told The State this week that he’s started the process of interviewing candidates for the job. As for a timeline, that remains more fluid since South Carolina’s top candidates are all coaching teams that are playing in the NCAA Tournament that starts this weekend.
On Friday, D1Baseball national insider Kendall Rogers reported that USC has identified two leading candidates for the job.
Rogers said that, “barring a last-second surprise,” the two current front-runners are Coastal Carolina head coach Kevin Schnall and West Virginia head coach Steve Sabins.
Both Schnall and Sabins are coaching games in the NCAA Tournament on Friday. Coastal plays Northern Illinois in the Tallahasee Regional, while WVU plays Binghamton in a regional the Mountaineers are hosting.
Schnall has been considered the fan favorite and reported frontrunner for quite some time. The long-time Coastal Carolina assistant took the Chanticleers to the finals in Omaha in his first year as head coach last year.
“Schnall’s candidacy is obviously zero surprise,” Rogers wrote. “We’ve been listing Schnall as the leading candidate for several weeks now, and I believe that remains the case.”
Sabins has been with the WVU baseball program since 2016 and was named head coach in 2025. He took West Virginia to the NCAA Super Regionals in his first year as head coach and received an extension through 2031 last summer.
“It will be interesting to see how fast things move if Coastal Carolina or West Virginia don’t make it out of their respective Regionals this weekend,” Rogers wrote.
Rogers also reported South Carolina showed “serious interest” in hiring Georgia Tech head coach James Ramsey. Ultimately, Ramsey signed a five-year extension with Georgia Tech on Wednesday. The extension came just one day after an anonymous GT donor pledged to provide up to $5 million in “additional scholarship support” for the program.
