Everything Mark Kingston said after South Carolina's game one win over Florida

Following South Carolina’s 10-3 win over Florida on Friday, head coach Mark Kingston spoke to the media. Here’s what he had to say.

On if the ninth inning rally can carry over

“I mean, again, you’re only as good as your next game. But today was a really good game. And it was punctuated by that last inning. It was a two-run ballgame. And you knew that the lineup for them was flipping over and Caglianone would be coming up. You just hope he wasn’t going to have the opportunity to be the tying run. So the fact that we were able to put up those runs late really allowed us to relax a little more in the bottom of the ninth.”

On Cole Messina hitting leadoff tonight and playing well

“Well, that was what the hope was. You’ve seen a lot of big strong guys in 2024 in modern baseball. Teams are going that way with the leadoff hitter. Here last year, Wyatt Langford did it for them, and he’s already in the big leagues. Schwarber’s done it, Judge has done it, Mike Trout does it. Again, we’re trying to find that the best version of ourselves. And until we find it and feel that we found it, we’re going to keep trying things. So we tried it today and it was a good look. There’s no question it was a good look today.”

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On keeping the faith in Will Tippett’s offense

“We made an adjustment in terms of just saying he’s going to hit right-handed the rest of the way. And you saw why. He has the ability to change the game like that if he can make contact. So that was really good for him and his confidence, I think. And that will help him. It’s good for us just to see that he’s capable of doing it.”

On Eli Jones’ outing

“He made some adjustments. A lot of times, he’s fastball-change and then a curveball-slider are kind of third pitches today. He featured the curveball and the slider. I think it shows that he can make adjustments based on who we’re facing and the kind of hitters he’s facing. So he bounced back. It’s the first thing I told the team in the postgame is Eli just showed what this thing’s all about. You have a tough week last week and you bounce back this week. It just shows that he has a heart of a champion.”

On taking Jones out after six innings of work

“Well, it was a very close game. And we’ve been burned a few times this year by trying to get more out of guys. We have confidence in our bullpen right now. And I think we need to hand the ball off to a guy a pitch too early rather than a pitch too late.”

On the decision to pitch to Caglianone in the seventh with a base open

“Well, there were two outs, you have a four run lead, you don’t invite another run with a 15 home run guy on deck. If that’s a two-run ballgame, you have a decision to make. Four-run ballgame, there was no decision to be made. The guy hit a homer, but we still had a two-run lead. And you don’t invite more runs when you’re up by four in that situation.”

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On being more aggressive early in the count against Brandon Neely

“We knew he was the closer for them, and we were going to try to get his pitch count up. By the same token, he was going to get ahead of us with that fastball. So we want to be more aggressive. But we also want to take types of swings that allow us to have success. I thought we took more swings that were shorter and quicker and much compact tonight, especially in RBI situations. And I think that’s why you saw score 10 runs and had 13 hits.”

On if the conversation about approach involved shorter and more compact swings

“We’ve been stressing it for a while. But sometimes, they just need to see it work and see it really quick to know how important that is. I mean, it’s always been an emphasis. Long swings just don’t work in RBI situations. But sometimes it just clicks there.”

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