Everything Paul Mainieri said after South Carolina's midweek loss to North Carolina

Following a 13-8 loss to No. 21 North Carolina on Tuesday, South Carolina head coach Paul Mainieri spoke to the media. Here’s everything he had to say.

How disappointed are you to see, in the eighth inning again, that you guys give up seven runs on Sunday and then five more tonight. Just how disappointing is that?

“Obviously, it was disappointing. We had a great comeback there and tied the game. Had the good potential go-ahead run at second base. One more hit, we take the lead, and we’ll see if we can hold it probably. But I only wanted to use Brandon Stone for the ninth inning today because he pitched on Friday — started that game. We need him, obviously, for this Friday, whether we start him or use him out of the pen. If we had taken the lead, I probably would have brought him in in the eighth inning there and tried to hold the game, hold the lead with him for two innings. But when we didn’t, you know, the game was tied, the plan was to use all these different guys, because we were short-handed with Eskew being hurt. we were hoping we’d get a bunch of shut out innings for one inning by from a bunch of different guys. Unfortunately, we only got three shutout innings out of nine. And we come back, fight back, tie the game, and then walk the leadoff hitter on four pitches in the eighth inning. And you just can’t do that against good teams.”

Did you have any thoughts on bringing any pitchers in particular back out for a second inning?

“No, no. The plan was what it was. The only deviation we made was to bring Soucie out once we knew there were going to be four left-handed hitters in a row the next inning. We thought Soucie gave us a good chance there. But, yeah, no. But as far as using other guys, the plan was one inning each and hand it to the next guy. But, you know, some guys did a good job. I thought Sweeney really threw the ball well tonight, you know, he looked like his old self. I was proud of Caleb Jones. He’s been waiting for his turn. He came in and gave us a shutout inning. Palmer gave us a shutout inning in the ninth. It was a little too late, though. But we just got to keep working hard. But 11 walks, two hit batters. I mean, you’re just not going to beat teams when you do that. It’s hard enough when you give up hits and some home runs, but when you give 13 free passes, it’s just too much to overcome.”

Any message to your guys with Tennessee coming in this weekend, coming off the rough weekend in Arkansas, and then tonight? How do you how do they keep their heads up?

“You just got to keep looking forward and battling each and every day. Every game is an entity in its own. We tell them that from the first day we ever met him. So, you know, nobody ever said it was going to be easy. If you want to play college baseball at this level, then you’re going to have some down times. We’ve faced some really good teams recently. So that has a lot to do with it. We just got to keep fighting. That’s all.”

Is this a little more down than maybe you thought at this early stage of the season?

“I don’t want to really evaluate that or talk about that. Now, obviously, there’s some things that we need to improve upon. But, hey, listen, we’re going to continue working with the guys. I mean, some things are fixable. It’s not a matter of talent being able to come in and just come out of the bullpen and throw strikes right away, you know? I mean, some guys do it. Other guys have the ability to do it. When they don’t do it, it’s something that we’ve got to improve upon. But, yeah, I’m not at the point right now where publicly, I’m going to talk about, you know, all the areas we need to improve in, because these are the guys we have, and we’re going to work as hard as we can with them.”

You expect Dylan Eskew back this weekend?

“Hoping so. We’re not sure yet.”

The home run ball has kind of bitten you guys lately over the weekend, and then four more tonight. What do you kind of chalk it up to?

“All of the above. You’re facing good hitters. You make a mistake. Good hitters are going to take advantage of that. Again, the wind was blowing out tonight. And you know, it’s not a real big ballpark here. It’s not as small as Arkansas, but give credit to North Carolina. You miss with a pitch and you pay. That’s why they’re one of the top-ranked teams in the country. They got a really good team, and I give a lot of the credit to them.”

Offensively, was there anything that you guys did well tonight that maybe you can build on?

“Well, we finally got a couple of clutch hits. For a while, the only runs we scored were on solo home runs, again. But then, Kaczmar came through with a big hit, with two strikes on him, and then Beau Hollins came through with a big hit. So, yeah, there’s some positives. Normally, you score eight runs in a game. You feel pretty good about your chances, but not tonight. We just couldn’t stop them because, partially because of how good they were, and partially because we handed them 13 free passes. So we just had a great comeback. I was really proud of the guys. They didn’t give up. We had a chance to take the lead even in the bottom of the seventh inning there, and then, it got away from us in the top of the eighth inning.”

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