Everything Paul Mainieri said after South Carolina's series loss to Arkansas

Following a 12-3 loss to No. 3 Arkansas, South Carolina head coach Paul Mainieri spoke one-on-one with GamecockCentral on Saturday. Here’s everything he had to say.

What did you make of the bullpen’s effort today to give you some good innings there?

“I mean, it wasn’t good enough. It didn’t help us win the game. But I was proud that the guys didn’t give up. That first inning was unbelievable. The first eight pitches of the game, two outs, and then Jake (McCoy) hits a kid, and we couldn’t get the third out — couldn’t get off the field. I felt bad for Jake. He was competing as hard as he could out there, and he was just having some bad luck. The chopper to short, and the guy beats it out. Then an error at short, he just had some bad luck there. I mean, he made a couple of bad pitches, obviously, hitting the guy, and then he gave up a single, and then he had their big home run hitter 0-2. And unfortunately, he hung him a slider. And the kid hit the three-run home run.

“But even still, I thought after that he, and then that’s when the bad luck kind of started on him, and he ended up just throwing so many pitches in that first inning that I had to take him out of the game. I couldn’t, in good conscience, leave him out there. He didn’t want to come out of the game because he’s a competitor. I didn’t really think he was pitching that poorly. It was just a couple bad pitches and a couple bad breaks. So we brought in Roman (Kimball), and he let a couple runs score there, and then he did okay. Then he gave up a home run. (The bullpen) did okay. I mean, after the first inning, it was a 4-3 game the rest of the way. But we dug ourselves such a big hole it was just hard to climb out of. And then when we did have chances, we had the bases loaded with (Ethan) Petry, I think, up one time, and then another time, (Jase) Woita smoked one and they doubled off the runner at second base, so that kind of killed our rally there.

“They’re (Arkansas) just such a good team. They’re just relentless on offense, really. If you make a bad pitch, you’re going to pay for it. If you don’t make a play, you’re going to pay for it. We got to score more than three runs to be able to beat these guys.”

Few things that you mentioned there. With McCoy, was there a point in that first inning that you felt like he might not be able to get out of this?

“Well, yeah, when I took him out of the game. I mean, he had already thrown 46 pitches. I just couldn’t, in good conscience, leave him out there. I mean, I think he would have eventually gotten out of it, but you can’t let a guy throw 50-plus pitches in an inning. So, yeah, it was a shame, because I know the kid was competing hard, and he’s been pitching so well for us. It was just a catastrophic inning for us.”

I know you mentioned there was some bad luck there with Henry Kaczmar making the error, and he had another ground ball, I think hit his way for an infield single. Was it kind of just that or was it a mixture of different things that allowed the first inning to unravel?

“Well, (McCoy) hit the first guy. He gave up three free passes. So the command wasn’t terrible, but he had a couple of hiccups there. It was a crazy inning. You don’t see that very often. Eight (runs) in the first. Just hard to come back from that once we were in that big of a hole.”

Petry had a few important at-bats in some big spots but couldn’t come through. What did you kind of see from him at the plate today?

“He just didn’t get many good swings off today. I don’t know what to say. I mean, he’s up there trying his best, but they pitched him tough. He didn’t come through today, but hopefully tomorrow he will.”

Arkansas is obviously a really good team. How difficult is this lineup to face through two straight games now?

“It’s as tough a lineup as you’ll see in the country. There’s no doubt about that. I mean, one through nine, there’s no breaks. They’re relentless. You can see by their statistics why their statistics are that way. They’re just very difficult to strike out. They’re very difficult to position because they use the whole field and they got power. So just a really good ball club. We got to find a way tomorrow to hold them down, and we got to hit better than seven hits and three runs.”

These games really haven’t been close at all. What is your message to the guys as they go into the series finale? And how do you expect them to respond in game three?

“I would hope that they would respond positively. Each game only counts for one game. So listen, these guys haven’t lost at home all year, I don’t think. I mean, so they’re obviously pretty good. So you come here and you get one win, you can go home with some degree of accomplishment. They’ll sweep a lot of people here, I can promise you that. We’re gonna do our very best tomorrow, and hopefully, we can sneak one away.”

What’s one thing you want to see done differently tomorrow that maybe could help you guys get to that point where you’re in a position to win?

“Well, we got to get through the first inning, first of all. Hopefully, our starting pitcher will give us a chance and keep us in the game after a few innings. We do have our best bullpen arms out there right now, so they haven’t been used yet. So if we can just stay in the game early, then the bullpen does a good job for us, but we have to hit. I mean, we can’t just expect to score three runs and beat these guys in this ballpark.”

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