Everything Paul Mainieri said after South Carolina's series-opening loss to Oklahoma

Following an 8-5 loss to No. 12 Oklahoma on Friday, South Carolina head coach Paul Mainieri spoke with the media. Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening statement

“We got in a hole there right out of the gate and facing the top pitchers in the country, for sure. First-round pick, really outstanding. I mean, the guy dominated the whole season, and we fall into a 7-1 hole and never gave up. Brandon Stone didn’t give up after the four-run first inning. He hung tough. He got us through five innings and saved our bullpen quite a bit. Our hitters got Witherspoon out of the game in the sixth inning, and I think he threw more pitches than he’d ever thrown in his career. And then we got some clutch hits, and we got within one swing of the bat to tie the game. We just couldn’t completely hold them.

“At the end of the day, the solo home runs hurt us, and hitting into a couple of double plays after got leadoff hitters got on in the seventh and eighth inning hurt us. But the kids never gave up. They battled hard right to the very end. And some days in baseball, the breaks go against you. To their credit, in the first inning, they hit some hard ground balls, but every ball found a hole. Stone’s a ground ball pitcher. And we had good scouting reports on the spray charts, and we had the guys positioned where we thought they should be positioned, and somehow the balls that they had just seemed to find the holes, and they hit a couple good ones too. But gave them four runs right out of the gate. But like I said, we never gave up. I’m really proud of the guys, and we’ll turn the page and get ready for tomorrow.”

Did you see anything abnormal for Stone in the first inning?

“I’m not making excuses for him, but this was kind of a crazy situation. I don’t think he got proper warm-up pitches. He never threw a breaking ball in his warm-up pitches. All of a sudden, the game started, and I’m looking at, did he even get enough warm-up pitches? And he just didn’t seem like himself when the inning started. But outside of the fact that the ball was a little bit more elevated than normal, and he couldn’t get his breaking ball over. They hit some hard ground balls that found holes. It was first and third, first and third. And it puts a lot of pressure on you right out of the gate. And we almost got out of the inning at three when Evan Stone made that terrific play and made the throw to the plate, but the runner dislodged the ball out of Talmadge’s glove. Otherwise, we hold it at three. But I thought after that, he settled in pretty well and got into a good rhythm.

“Like I said, he showed a lot of courage. He didn’t give up, and he kept his team in the game. I told him, after the first couple innings, I said, ‘Look, you need to eat up some innings is what Friday night starters have to do. They have to save the bullpen.’ He got to 91 pitches after five innings, so I thought it was the right time to take him out. But a lesser kid would have given up right away and maybe would have gotten hooked in the second inning. But he battled hard, and I thought he got into a good rhythm after that. They’re tough. They’ve got a tough lineup. A lot is made of their pitching, but they’ve got a bunch of scrappy hitters, too, and they’ve got a lot of speed.”

Kennedy Jones had a tough night at the plate. Swung at a lot of first pitches. What did you see from him out there?

“He just had a tough night. Facing that caliber of pitching is really hard to hit, and he was getting his cuts in. In fact, I thought our whole team, even when we were losing 7-1, to be honest with you, I thought our whole team was up there really taking some good rips at the ball. We just weren’t squaring them up, which is hard to do when a guy is throwing 94 to 97 miles an hour; it’s hard to square that ball up. But it wasn’t for lack of aggressiveness and good rips up at the plate. I know that sounds like small consolation, but it didn’t surprise me that we started getting hits later on. Scobey, I thought his one at-bat where he swung at, I think that was when I gave him a green light on a 3-0 pitch. And I’m sure a lot of you were in the press box saying, ‘What the heck is he doing?’ But I just thought we needed to spark the team somehow, rather than a walk. I felt like somebody needed to square one up. Then on the 3-1 pitch, he smoked that line drive up the middle. And I think it just gave our team some life and loosened them up a little bit. Like, ‘Oh, hey, this guy’s hittable.’ If we keep swinging, we’re going to start squaring some balls up. And in Kennedy’s case, like the double play in the seventh inning, I thought he hit that ball pretty good, actually. It just was right at the shortstop, and it took a candy hop right up to him. These guys play on turf at home, and I thought they might struggle a little bit the first time. I don’t know if it’s their first time, but maybe on the clay, the ball just kind of bounced right up to him, and they were able to turn the double play.”

Continuation of trying to remember the other double play Jones hit into where Ethan Petry was called for interference…

“I think it was just a brain cramp. I can’t understand why he didn’t slide. And we talked about it. He just froze. That was a shame. But yeah, Kennedy will be back tomorrow. He’ll be back in there getting his rips again, and he might put four hits tomorrow. It’s just how baseball is.”

It’s a small sample size, but only one extra base hit tonight, only one homer in the Clemson series. It’s kind of the best pitching you’ve faced this year. Do you worry about the power with this lineup, or do you think you can still piece it together?

“I mean, you are who you are. We don’t have an enormous amount of power in our lineup. If you watch our batting practice, we don’t lose a lot of baseballs in batting practice. So they’re not going to all of a sudden step in the game and start hitting five, six home runs in a game. And that was the difference tonight. They hit those three solo homers and we didn’t hit any. So, at the end of the day, I guess that was the difference in the game. But you know, the kids are doing the best they can. You are who you are.”

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