Everything Paul Mainieri said after run-rule win over Presbyterian

South Carolina took the victory over Presbyterian 11-1 Tuesday night. Head coach Paul Mainieri spoke to the media after the win.

Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening Statement

“Oh, nice to win a game. I guess that’s the understatement of the day. There were several good things tonight. Some real, really good clutch hits and balls hit hard with runners in scoring position. It was a shame that the game ended the way it did. Ugly there at the end, but up until then, there was, it was a lot of good stuff and some good pitching. And like I said, just the bottom line is it was good to win a game and get ready to go to Starkville.”

“So I told Nate before the game that I hate moving him out of the leadoff spot because he’s been everything that you could hope for in that spot. Tremendous blend of power and speed and he’s tough to strike out, and he’s just been a great leader for us there. But I just felt like we needed to move him into a spot where he might hit the runners on base more frequently, because he’s certainly one of the very best hitters we have, if not the best hitter we have on our team, along with Petry and you want those guys to be in the clutch situations. I told them both, Petry and him, that, ‘Hey, look, we’re not going to do anything this year if you guys don’t take the lead and drive in a lot of runs and do some extraordinary stuff.’ And it’s a lot of pressure to put on just two kids.

“But, everybody in our lineup, except for Cayden Gaskin, got a hit. But the difference today from the other day was that we got some clutch ones. Petry, yeah, it was a two-run homer. But what I was more excited about was that he hit it. He hit the ball hard with two outs and a runner in scoring position. It just happened to be a long fly ball out of the ballpark as well. But then, you know, Nathan, obviously, but Gavin Braland came through with a big two-run single, I think, which was really the key of the night. But two strikes, two outs, gets a base hit up the middle. And then, you know, Nathan added to that. So we hit some balls hard, too. Like Carrion hit that ball really hard right at the right fielder, with a runner on second. And Kaczmar hit a couple of balls really hard. I think one of them was with the runner in the scoring position. So, hopefully we’re going to get that aspect of our team going, you know, and it was better tonight.”

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Flipping the calendar to April with a new mentality

“Well, you said it, I’ve had a long career, so I’ve seen it all. I’ve been on very high highs, and I had some pretty low moments too. I remember my team at LSU, that year after we won the National Championship, we had a seven-game losing streak as well. We got swept at Ole Miss, three one-run games. I think they walked us off all three games, lost the midweek game, and then went down to Gainesville and got swept. It was a long seven-game stretch. So I’ve been through it, you know, and I know that tough times don’t last as long as you know, your attitude is positive, you continue to work hard, you continue to believe in yourself. Eventually, you’ll come out of it. And it’s life lessons for these kids.

“Nothing in life is a smooth sail and glass-like water. Everybody’s going to have five holes that they have to navigate around in their lives, so they might as well learn how to do that when they’re 18 to 22 years old. It’s not any fun to learn those lessons the hard way. But you know, I mean, if you look at it realistically, I’ve said this a couple times already, so I sound like a broken record, but those were seven tough games, tough teams to play. I mean, Arkansas and Tennessee certainly were, in my opinion, two, if not the very best two teams in the country. Certainly, it doesn’t take long to call roll for those teams. You know what I mean, and North Carolina in between there. And you know, about half the games were really competitive, had a chance to win, and just didn’t do enough to win the games.

“And so it’s one of those learning lessons. I try to be very transparent with the players and explain that to them, and make them understand I’m making excuses for them. Hey, look, this is a tough league. We’re going to play more tough teams. So you can’t just say, oh, you know, they’re better than us. We can’t beat them. You have to learn to beat them. You have to learn to do things. And I’ve seen some positive things another way, swinging through tonight and way through on Sunday. We’re very positive for us. I still have a lot of confidence in Brandon Stone. I thought he made an awful lot of clutch pitches in that Saturday game against Tennessee. I thought the first home run that they hit was a kind of wind-blown fly ball. The second one they hit, really good, but he just kind of left A couple of sinkers up, and they took advantage of it because they were a good team, but he made a lot of clutch pitches in those three innings.

“Think Jake McCoy is growing, and Jarvis Evans Jr. has done some really great things for us. So there’s some positive things out there. If you look at the final result, and that’s how everybody grades you, you know that’s what matters the most. But when you’re in the trenches with the kids, you have to dwell on some of the positive things to keep their spirits up and keep them believing it does no good. You just beat them up and tell them they’re not any good. You know, or you know they hear that enough on the outside noise. They don’t need to hear that from me, I’m telling them what they do wrong, what they need to do to get better. But you ask the question, how do you keep them up? And how do you know when you’ve been through everything there is to see in the game, you call on your experience to talk to them about those kinds of things. And hopefully, you know this, this month will be a lot better. I’ve said it many times. I want us to be a better team in April and when we’re in March, and a better team in May than we are in April. So you just want to keep getting better, and hopefully the results will show that.”

Did you see any give up or head hanging amongst your team over the weekend?

“Not really. I didn’t think Sunday we laid it all out there on the field like we did the first two days. Maybe having to switch to a noon game following a tough loss had something to do with that. We were supposed to play at five o’clock, as you remember. So, I mean, it’s hard to suffer a loss like that on Saturday, you know, where we had the lead in the eighth inning, and then we came back and tied it in the bottom of the eighth and had a chance to take the lead, and they turned that 3-6-3 double play after the short stop made that unbelievable play. And then to lose a game like that, and have to turn around as quickly as we did to play, it’s easier to turn around if you won that game. There’s a lot more bounce in your stuff. But the kids had to digest it very quickly and and I don’t think Sunday was our very best effort.

“I don’t think it was like a matter of not hustling or that type of thing. I just think we had two RBI singles, you can’t beat a team like Tennessee with two runs. You have to grow up, grind through every at-bat throughout the game. Maybe we’re a little bit down in the dumps, and it kept us from that little extra fight that you need to have to overcome it all. But I didn’t see any finger-pointing. I didn’t see any like mopping. I mean, kids were disappointed. If they listened, if they weren’t disappointed, they didn’t care. So you want them to care, but it’s a fine line. You can’t drag it into the next day outside of that. I don’t think so. I think the kids are staying the course. They’re going to keep fighting.”

On the lineup changes made tonight

“Cayden Gaskin is really the one kid of all the position players I really haven’t given a good chance to. And the kid did a lot of great things in junior college last year. I wasn’t here when he was recruited. I was just taking a job, I think, when Monte [Lee] recruited him. But he did special stuff last year at the junior college. But then we started the season with Nawrocki, because we thought his physicality was a determining factor, where he could hit the ball out of the ballpark. But Nolan was dealing with these knee issues. I don’t think we really saw the true athlete that he is and is capable of being. And then, you know, one day, I didn’t really quite understand how much the knees were really affecting Nolan. He was kind of keeping it to himself. So one day, I decided to give Jordan Carrion a chance to play. And, you know, because he had done so many good things in a variety of positions, and he just won’t let go of the job. He just keeps doing good stuff, you know, kicks the double-play ball. But nobody’s perfect. And he’s done a lot of really good things. So I started working Cayden in the outfield a little bit, just in the hopes that if we had a good victory, you know, we’re just a little bit one-sided, at least I could get him into games. This past weekend, we just didn’t get enough clutch hits and so forth.

“And I actually inserted him in the game last week in North Carolina. I challenged the position players who weren’t playing to see who wanted to step up. And he actually came down to me in the dugout and said, ‘Put me in, coach. I’ll come through for us.’ And I admired that about him. So I did. I put him in the game. Jordan didn’t do anything wrong to come out of the game, but I put him in, and he had a good at-bat. And he struck out. At least he was getting his cuts up there. I’ve been wanting to play him, you know, start him in a game. And so today, I just thought it was the right time to do it. And unfortunately, he didn’t have a great game tonight. But Evan Stone has been a guy that’s done some good stuff for us, and like I mentioned earlier, you don’t want to get all under the three holes, four holes. So mixed results tonight.”

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