Everything Paul Mainieri said after midweek win over Davidson

A sixth-inning rally helped the Gamecocks secure the win over Davidson, but it wasn’t pretty. Head coach Paul Mainieri spoke to members of the media after the 7-3 win over the Wildcats.

Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening Statement

“Okay, well, it’s good to get back in the winner’s circle, obviously, after the weekend, but it wasn’t a thing of beauty out there. But we’ll take the win and move on.

“I do have a couple things to say. Number one, anytime you have a comeback, come from behind win, it’s a good one. You know those are things that build confidence in your team. And secondly, it was great to see Henry Kaczmar swing to bat well. Suprised you didn’t ask to have him up here in this post-game press conference. He hit that big home run, of course, to get us on the board. And then had another really good hit. We’ve got to get his defense back together. He had a couple of rough plays out there on the field, but it was good. Honestly, I’m not that worried about his defense. I was just happy to see him swing the bat with some aggressiveness. Got two hits, two walks, so he’s on base four times.

“And then the other thing was, I thought our freshman catcher Gavin Braland really played a really solid game. He had the one passed ball on a big breaking ball. It was a little bit of a freaky thing. He thought he had caught it, kind of squished between his legs there. But I decided that I thought he played a really good ballgame, handled the pitching staff well, got a big hit for us. I’ve got a big front down. They kind of turned around the game. So I was just really proud of Gavin and his first start, and our pitching.”

On the errors in the field

“Yeah, well, the first ball that Kaczmar missed the double play, ball was really hit hard and just kind of caught him in between. The second one, you know, that’s a play I’ve watched him make 1,000 times. I haven’t really talked to him about it yet or looked at the video of what happened, but he just didn’t make play. [Nolan Nawrocki] that was a pretty routine play, too. So I don’t know; we work hard on defense every day. I just think some days, you know, don’t make plays, and it’s part of the game, but we need to play better defense than that. There’s no question about it. So that was the only discouraging thing for the night for me.

We wouldn’t hit the ball a ton, but I thought we pitched it great, but our defense was a little bit subpar. Although Ethan Petry made a nice play there to end the game, run and catch. Outside of that, I remember [KJ] Scobey had a smash that he handled really well. Thought a good game over there at first base, solid, you know, I think he had a pick on one ball. It was nice to see Beau [Hollins] get a base hit as well. Had the kiddy core out there tonight, four freshmen in the starting lineup. It was too bad we didn’t make that double play ball for Garino, and then he gave up the three run homer right after that. But outside of that, I thought he threw the ball well. He threw a lot of strikes. Soucie came in and did pretty good job, and Pitzer, of course, was awesome to get out of that inning. And you know, Brandon Stone has just been a Godsend for us in this early part of the season. He dominated the two innings that he was out there. That was good to get Caleb Jones out there for the first time.”

Did you see any residual mental health effects on your players from the Clemson series?

That’s a really good question, but I don’t think so, really. For people like the media, fans, and coaches, we really get into it, you know? I mean, it’s my livelihood. But those 18 to 22-year-olds, fortunately, they have very short memories. They move past things pretty quickly. Sometimes, you wish that it bothered them a little bit more. But the truth of the matter is, after doing this for 40 years, I’d rather have a short memory and be able to move on, because it doesn’t do any good to feel sorry for yourselves when you don’t get the job done. The next game is important; the worst thing that can happen when you have disappointments is that it carries into more games down the road.”

“But I felt that our players were real enthusiastic today. We did. We talked a lot about it with them after the game on Sunday, and basically the message was, look, can’t go back and turn back the clock. It’s over. We didn’t get the job done. The games were all hard-fought games. There were very close games right up until the end of the eighth and ninth innings. We didn’t do what it took to win the games, and the other team did, and we have to be men about it and accept that fact and now move on. And that’s the only attitude that you can take because there’s a lot of games left in the season. You can’t sit around and pout about the things you didn’t get done.”

On the decision to pull Jackson Soucie on a 1-1 count

“Once that runner moved into scoring position, I just needed to have a better matchup. And Pitzer is breaking ball and velocity against that pretty good right-handed hitter; that was what we needed to do there. Pitcher rose to the occasion. Did a great job the guy out.”

What do you want to try and work toward before the SEC schedule begins?

“Yeah, well, the big thing is, I wish you could get a little bit more healthy. We were about a third of our starting lineup tonight, besides Kennedy and Talmadge. Dalton Mashore is having trouble with the leg. It’s more like a hip, actually. So, he actually had an MRI during the game. He wasn’t even here, so I haven’t talked to the trainer yet to give any kind of report on him, but he’s been struggling with it the whole season. So, you know, hopefully, Kennedy will be ready to go by this weekend. Talmadge is hoping that his thumb quiets down a little bit. We know it’s a fracture, but it just was angry after that tag play on Saturday. So it’s all swollen, and hopefully, it’ll be ready to go. I don’t know what the situation is with Dalton. So we got to try some different things. I thought Hollins showed well, but obviously, if you have to play a freshman, more than one freshman in a starting lineup in an SEC series right out of the gate, that’s going to be a big ask. But we’ll just kind of keep reevaluating everything and put the best team out there that we can.”

Do you know the starting pitcher for tomorrow?

“Yeah, Jarvis Evans.”

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