Everything Paul Mainieri said after South Carolina's final midweek win of year

Following a 6-5 win over Winthrop on Tuesday, South Carolina head coach Paul Mainieri spoke to the media. Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening statement

“Just real happy for the kids. They’ve had so many tough times during the course of this year, and to have a great comeback like that was really special. I’m just real happy that they got to experience that, and it was a good win for us, and we’ll be ready for the weekend.”

Can you take us through Ethan Petry getting back healthy and the decision to put him back in the starting lineup tonight?

“So I was gone the last two days, made a recruiting trip to try to get some prospects for next year. So I actually wasn’t at practice yesterday, and I got a text message from our trainer, Corey Barton. He said, ‘Hey, I’ve got some good news. Petry is feeling good and he took some batting practice today, and I think he’s going to be ready to play tomorrow.’ So I was on the road, like I said, traveling. I was on airplanes for two days, and when I had a break in the Atlanta airport, I sent Petry a text message, and he said, ‘Yeah, I feel great and you know, anxious to get in there. I can definitely play tomorrow.’

“So I was really excited about that, as you might imagine. It was totally up to him and the trainer. I wasn’t pushing it at all. But obviously, Ethan could have just bowed out and called it a season, but he wanted to get back in there and give the old college try, so to speak. It was a big uplift to everybody on the team. We were real happy that he went out there and tried it. I don’t know how it feels right now, but he gave it a shot. I really respect him for that.”

To beat every mid-major opponent you guys faced this year. Does that say more about how good the SEC is, or just kind of one of those things that happened?

“Well, you know, I’m proud of that actually, you know, because you look around the country, not many people do that. And I think the only midweek game we lost was to North Carolina when we had a tie game in the eighth inning and got away from us. It’s hard. College baseball is hard. You have an emotional weekend and then you got to turn around and play on Tuesdays. I used to always play on Wednesdays, because I always thought it was so hard after an emotional weekend, and then Monday’s a day off, and then you got to jump right in and play on Tuesday. But when the SEC added their TV contract where we had a lot of series Thursday through Saturday, I got tired of having to call schools, because you never knew when you’re going to have that week. They didn’t release that until like, December. So then I’m having to call schools, and sometimes those schools had games scheduled on Tuesday and Wednesday already, or something like that. So finally, a few years ago, I just threw my hands and said, I’ll just play on Tuesday, like the rest of the world. But it’s hard, and that’s why you see a lot of teams lose on Tuesdays, because it’s very difficult to put a weekend behind you, whether you played great and won them all, or whether you got beat all three games, or something in between.

“So I’m proud of our guys. Some of them haven’t been real pretty, like tonight wasn’t real pretty for about five innings. I don’t think we hit a ball hard until Scobey hit that home run. Actually, I think Kaczmar hit one harder at the second baseman in the first inning. But we haven’t really a lot of good at-bats. But we hung in there. I thought we were pitching pretty well. They had 1.3 runs on three solo home runs. I think they were all on 3-2 pitches, if I’m not mistaken. So we weren’t pitching that poorly, really. And then we had two outs, nobody on when Jarvis was on him. Now we hit a batter and then walked the batter. They got a couple of flukey runs there.

“But hey, you know, the kids didn’t give up. We got some big hits in that inning, not just Beau’s, but Hall and Kaczmar had big hits for us. When I saw that center fielder closing in on those balls, I thought that this is very typical of the year we’ve had. This kid’s gonna make a diving catch and break our hearts right now. And fortunately, the kid was just a little bit late getting there, and the ball fell and got away from him, and Woita’s blazing speed from first base was able to score.”

Can you talk about Parker Marlatt’s outing to close out the game in the ninth and him facing Josh Skowronski, who had already hit two homers, with two outs?

“Well, he got ahead of him with a fastball and then threw him two really good curveballs. And the second one was perfect, you know, was out of the zone and got him. The kid was anxious, and, you know, he’s a red shirt freshman, I think so he hasn’t had a lot of college experience. He didn’t even play against us. I don’t think the first game down in, I mean, up in Rock Hill, but boy, he sure hit well against us today. Home run to left, home run to right. RBI single, I wouldn’t have been all that disappointed with a walk right there. Let’s see if we can get the next guy, but our lots of competitors, so he went right after him, got ahead him with a fastball, and then through a really good curve ball for a strike, and then got him to chase the one in the dirt. So he was really good clutch pitching there.”

Gavin Braland had that play where he jumped into the stands, and you pinch-hit for him in the bottom half of the inning. Is he all good?

“Oh no, he’s fine. We were just down, and I just wanted to try to get a rally going and go with a little bit more experienced, better hitter. So, unfortunately, you know, Blake, I thought he had walked on the 3-1 pitch, but ended up striking out. But we went through three catchers, but it ended up working out in the end.”

Speaking of going through three catchers, you bring in Kennedy Jones to get the rally kind of started there with that first run there. What kind of went into the decision to have him pinch hit there?

“Kennedy is a more experienced and better hitter. When you’re losing, you’ve got to take some chances. I mean, I didn’t have another catcher on the bench if someone happened to Kaufer, but I figured, what difference does it make? We’re losing. We’ve got to try to get something going. I’m real happy for Kennedy to come through with that hit. That was really big. We’re going to need him Thursday. I assume Kade Anderson’s pitching for LSU, and, you know, he’ll be in there against Anderson. He gives us a right-handed bat against a tough left-handed pitcher, and maybe that’ll give Kennedy a little confidence going into Thursday.

“He hasn’t had quite the year that he had hoped for. He’s had some nagging injuries. Remember when he got hit on the hand on the pitch on his fingers? And he just hasn’t had quite the year that we all would have hoped he’d have. But, you know, now he’s at the bottom of the ninth inning of his career. It’s nice to see him come through with the clutch hit, and hopefully he’ll have a good weekend for us as well.”

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