At South Carolina, the postseason is the expectation. Mark Kingston learned that soon after accepting the job as the Gamecocks’ head coach.

Now, as he’s entering his first regional appearance with the Gamecocks, he’s learning about balancing expectations from a coach that won’t be in the NCAA Tournament this season: Miami’s Jim Morris, who Kingston worked under for two years at Miami.

“I learned a ton from him. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a lot more over my career, but my two years at Miami were the equivalent of getting my masters in coaching baseball,” Kingston said. “I learned everything you could possibly need to learn about coaching and managing expectations.”

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Kingston worked at Miami as a volunteer assistant for two seasons between 2000-01 as the Hurricanes won a national championship in 2001. At a program like Miami, which has 25 College World Series appearances and four national titles, Kingston learned how to manage lofty expectations.

So when he got to South Carolina—a program with two titles in 11 trips to Omaha—working under those kinds of goals wasn’t new to him.

That experience didn’t faze him when the Gamecocks were 20-17 and 6-9 in the SEC. He helped guide the team to an 11-4 finish in conference play en route to a No. 2 seed in the East Carolina regional.

“Guys, when they come into this program, they know you’re coming in trying to win the next national championship and get to Omaha and be a part of the big dance,” Kingston said. “You do need to remind them that sometimes maybe we aren’t doing enough and we need to focus a little bit more.”

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The Gamecocks are in their 32nd regional in school history, playing the No. 3-seeded Ohio State Buckeyes Friday at 2 p.m.

They’ll play either East Carolina or No. 4 seed UNC Wilmington Saturday. Now Kingston has to take his team and find a balance between staying loose and playing focused enough to win.

“The postseason is what people get remembered for. People remember Jackie Bradley playing in Omaha. Michael Roth made his name in the postseason,” Kingston said. “Our focus is on the opportunity and on the excitement of it. To me, that’s the only way to approach it.”

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If they advance out of a regional, the Gamecocks would advance to their 13th super regional in school history.

For Kingston, he’s never advanced out of a regional as a head coach, dropping a championship game to Florida last year with South Florida.

With him in Greenville and Morris not in this year’s tournament after a 28-26 mark in 2018, the Gamecocks head coach will be relying on Morris’s advice with the legendary coach out of the tournament.

Kingston said Morris and former Tulane head coach Rick Jones have been two of the biggest influences on his career.

“(Morris) used to say this all the time, winning is a relief because people just expect it at the highest level,” Kingston said. “He just prepared me for everything you need to run a program like that. That’s someone I’ll be forever in debt to. Hopefully he has a great retirement because he deserves it.”

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