Everything Mark Kingston said following 15-2 victory over ETSU
The Gamecocks lead by head coach Mark Kingston dominated ETSU 15-2 in run-rule fashion.
Here’s everything he said after the win.
Opening Statement
“Well great game for us obviously. Not sure if I’m more impressed with our pitchers or our hitters tonight, great to know that they both were as good as they were. That was a good team we played tonight, 27 wins coming in, hitting .320 plus, it’s a really good team. The fact that we won 15-2 and gave up three hits, had 14 ourselves just thrilled with what that team looked like tonight.”
Blake Jackson leaving game after being hit by pitch
“It was precaution.”
Starting Jake McCoy on the mound and using big name pitchers like Gainey and Veach
“We knew the guys coming into the game out of the bullpen were going to try to get one inning out of each of them and you gotta get these guys in a rhythm. We played Wednesday this week so its Friday, Saturday, Sunday so we wanted to get them on smaller pitch counts. But also get them back in a good rhythm, get some confidence. The reason we pitched Jake is because Jake is an extremely talented freshman, not many lefty freshman in the country throw up to 96 MPH. He’s gotten progressively better and we just thought he deserved the opportunity. I think it’s my fault he gave up the two runs in that first inning. We pitched to the righty that was hitting over .500 on the year against lefties with a guy on deck that probably would’ve been a better match up. If we had done that he might not have given up any runs in that inning so I thought Jake handled himself pretty well today.”
Lineup and offense
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“Well it’s much improved, you can point to a lot of different reasons and I won’t go into all of them tonight because I think it’s just all of them. Some of its personnel, some of is preparation, some of it confidence. There’s a lot of different things but its a kind of offense we hope to have when we get to the year so just want to see it continue.”
Second in the country with quad one wins, 18-2 in quads 2-4
“This was a border line quad 1 team too I think they were 52 coming into the night so by playing us on the road tonight they may have snuck into that top 15. Look you play to win every game and we have as many quad one challenges as anybody in the country and I would say we have more top five games than anybody in the country and there’s a huge difference. You want to make sure that when you are playing teams that are top five, top 10, you just hold your own and we’ve done that. Then when you play teams outside of that number, you want to try to dominate the whole, I think we’ve done that. I think we’ve won most of the game we were supposed to win, I think we’ve only had one midweek loss all season and I think that speaks to the depth we have on our team.”
Corner guys, Ethan and Gavin in new positions
“Im confident with them out there. I know Gavin made the error on that hopper today but I thought he made the right decision on the play just didn’t make the play. I feel good with them out there, I think they are getting more confident the more they play. We were think as the game started to get away and we had some distance score wise ‘Should we get them out of there?’ But the decision was made, its a new infield, keep them out there, let them continue to get their feet wet and get reps. I feel good with them out there, obviously what it’s done to our offense has been pretty special.”
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What stands out about Missouri and is Will Tippett available?
“Will Tippett is TBD and Missouri, all our focus was on this game tonight so we will get to work tonight and tomorrow. I can’t speak on Missouri, I apologize. My assistants have probably done some homework on that but my focus was on this game tonight.”
Do you feel like you are starting to peak on the season?
“Im not going to jinx it and say we are peaking right now, I’m just going to say we are improving and evolving. I think that’s probably words; we’re evolving, we’re turning into what we thought we could be and I just want to see that continue. I know I say that a lot but we are improving and we are evolving and that’s what you want to see out of the good teams at the end of the year.”
