Paul Mainieri knows it would require a miracle to get something out of the 2025 campaign. He admits South Carolina baseball is “not where we want to be,” through three quarters of the regular season.
But with 14 regular season games to go and a dozen in SEC play, the Gamecocks have won four of their last five and are coming off a series win over Ole Miss last weekend. They’re heading to Kentucky this weekend, historically a house of horrors for the program even during its best seasons. The Gamecocks have lost six of their last seven series in Lexington, and astoundingly five of those six teams made it to at least a super regional.
“It’s going to be another tough SEC series,” Mainieri said. “It’s a very unique environment over there at Kentucky. It’s all artificial turf. It’ll be our first game all year I believe on artificial turf. We’ll get over there tomorrow night and have a nice practice, hopefully get used to the terrain.”
South Carolina continued the positive vibes from the weekend on Tuesday night with a midweek win over North Florida, a 3-2 squeaker punctuated by freshman third baseman KJ Scobey’s walk-off double.
“Just to see the kids so excited is what excites me,” Mainieri said. “The kids are still excited about coming to the field every day. I’ve been doing this for so many years. There’s been so many years where you’re just sputtering to the finish line and players can’t wait for the season to be over. I don’t feel that at all with these guys.”
Kentucky poses a unique challenge with its style. The small ball heavy Wildcats thrive on putting the ball in play and forcing defenses to make plays. Nick Mingione’s club leads the SEC in getting hit by pitches, sacrifice bunts, sacrifice flies and fewest double plays grounded into, while also being second in both stolen bases and stolen base attempts.
And although Kentucky is just 8-10 in SEC play, it is coming off a road series victory at Tennessee behind dominant pitching performances in the final two games. Kentucky also boasts the unique accolade of being the only team in the conference to neither sweep a league series or get swept this season.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to execute some pick-off moves and some pitch outs when we think they’re going to be stealing,” Mainieri said. “That’s their style. They’re going to try to create havoc on the bases.”
Mainieri’s team has momentum for the first time in conference play, but the task is still enormous. Clawing back into any kind of postseason contention after a 2-13 start to conference play is nearly impossible, and even playing good baseball and even stacking series wins may not be enough without some external factors also helping.
A thousand miles starts with a step, though, and South Carolina took a first step last weekend.
“I guess I can dream,” Mainieri said. “What if we won all five series in the second half of the season? Who knows? You do that, you make a good run in the SEC Tournament, your RPI keeps moving up, maybe we can salvage something out of this season.”
First pitch of Friday’s game is at 6:30 p.m., with Saturday’s game scheduled for 4:30 p.m. before Sunday’s 1:00 p.m. finale.
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