Everything Paul Mainieri said after South Carolina's shutout win on Tuesday

Following a 4-0 win over The Citadel on Tuesday, South Carolina head coach Paul Mainieri spoke to the media. Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening statement

“Just really proud of the guys for bouncing back today after a couple of heartbreaks this past weekend. It sounds like a broken record, I know, but there’s no use dwelling on the past. I told the guys when we got back from College Station after such a heartbreaking defeat, as heartbreaking as it ever can be, that you just can’t do anything about the past. You have to seize the moment. And we didn’t.

“We ended up losing the game. But the worst thing is, if you let it drag into the next day or the next game or whatever, we still have a lot to play for. And the guys went out there and played pretty well tonight. I thought, obviously, we pitched great right from the start. Soucie, Pitzer, Ashton, Marlatt, they all did a tremendous job to pitch a shutout. We played good defense behind them. We hit just enough to make it work. So I’m just really proud of the guys that they represented our university in such a great way tonight.”

How good was it just to see your pitching staff put up nine zeros tonight, just kind of flush the weekend, knowing there’s a big series this weekend?

“I mean, it’s hard to win college baseball games. I’ve been doing it for a lot of years. I’m not sure how many times I’ve coached a team that’s blowing a 10 lead lead, but, you know, it can happen. When you’re playing these teams in this league and the ballparks are small and the winds are galing out, and to get a little momentum going. Now, when we got back from the game, we flew right back after. I met with the guys in the locker room, and I said, ‘Yeah, I know this may sound crazy to you all, but I didn’t even think we were pitching that bad in the eighth and ninth innings.’ (Texas A&M) had a little good fortune, and then they had some really good at-bats, and they had a ball-first grand slam. I thought it was just a fly ball to centerfield, and it just got up in the gale and just blew out of there. I’ve seen that happen a lot of times at Texas A&M. The wind’s always blowing there. And Caleb came in, and, you know, got the leadoff hitter in their order, which was a big out, and then he gives up a bloop single, and then he strikes out the three-hole hitter. So he was pitching good, and then he pitched the next two guys real carefully, which both those guys were hurting us all weekend. And unfortunately, the guy turned around a 94-mile-an-hour fastball. I really didn’t think Caleb pitched that bad, and I didn’t think that Sweeney did, either.

“Somehow we ended up blowing the lead. But I thought the kids played their hearts out in game one and then game three. The middle game was, I think, an aberration to our season. We just got in such a big hole right away. And they just ended up putting us away. But I told the kids after the second game over there, I said, you know, gave him a short talk after the game. I just said, ‘You’ll show what you’re made of by what you do going out there tomorrow. You know, what kind of effort you put forth.’ And they played their hearts out. The whole game, we had a bunch of clutch hits. We played hard, played great. And we’re thinking about run-ruling them there practically. And next thing you know, we’re going home with a loss. It was really an amazing thing, but that can happen to a lot of pitching staffs. Texas A&M was the preseason number one team in the country for a reason. They got a powerful lineup, and in that ballpark, when the wind’s galing out, it’s really hard to get out, especially when some of their hitters were really hot, and it was tough on us all weekend.

“So to go out there tonight, I don’t care who the opponent is, you go out there and you pump a lot of strikes. I don’t know how many walks we had tonight. After walking so many batters this past weekend, to go out there and make them earn it. We made a lot of good pitches tonight, and played good defense behind them. We hit great, but we fortunately had the one good rally, and Scobey hit a ball into the bullpen. So it was enough.”

A few quick player questions for you. Nolan Nawrocki was back in the lineup for the first time since March 12. What changed as far as his injury goes? Nathan Hall — how has he been doing after missing the last two games? Then, with Brandon Stone, he hasn’t pitched since April 6. Is there a particular reason behind that?

“Let’s go back to Nawrocki. So I met with Nawrocki before we left for College Station, and he had just gotten back from going to see a doctor up in New York. He went to get a second opinion on his knees, and we discussed his options. We actually talked about why his knees were hurting him so much, and he was explaining to me that it was a lot of change of direction with that really hurt him, which, as an infielder, that’s going to happen. You have a lot of quick stops and go the other direction. So we actually started to discuss a position change for him, you know, possibly moving to the outfield. He’s a really fast runner. People don’t realize, for a big man, how fast he can move. So I said, ‘Look, what if your knees, before you have to make a decision on the surgery, why don’t you go out and work in the outfield while we’re gone?’ We have a machine called FungoMan that can throw fly balls. And I said, somebody that’s here can do that. You can take some fly balls and see how instinctive it is, how easy it is to judge balls, whatever.

“So anyway, we got back from the trip, and I talked to him, I guess Monday, or maybe it was before practice Tuesday. Excuse me, it was either Sunday or it was before practice on Monday. And he worked out four days in a row while we were gone, out on the field. In fact, I saw him starting to go work out as we were going to get on the bus to leave College Station last Wednesday. So when I talked to him, I said, ‘Did you work out while we were gone?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I hit and took fly balls every day.’ I said, ‘How are your knees feeling?’ And he said they feel great. So anyway, he took batting practice yesterday with our team. He went through a full practice, and, man, he’s hitting balls off the batter’s eye. He must have hit a half a dozen balls off the batter’s eye and out of the ballpark. And I thought, you know, let’s see. I was hoping he’d go in there tonight and hit a few balls hard, and it’d be something we’d continue with. Now, you know, I’ve got to reevaluate it. He didn’t really look great tonight. His timing, I think, was off, whatever. So I don’t know if I’m gonna throw him in there against Hunter Elliott on Thursday after not having played. But I thought, ywhy not give it a look and see if you’re going to hit enough to play the outfield, and if that’s something that maybe we can pursue. So it’s a work in progress. We’re going to see if that’s something that we’ll continue to look at.

“As far as Nathan Hall goes, he’s getting better. He went back on one of the balls that were, was a home run in game two over there, and he whacked his foot against the wall and basically his heel. So we’ve looked at it, we’ve had an MRI, and we’ve done the whole thing. We just think it’s a strain of the Achilles tendon. There’s no damage to it or anything. He could barely walk with a limp the next day. But it’s progressively gotten better and better. So it’s going to probably be a game-time decision, whether or not he can go on Thursday or not. Maybe if he can’t play centerfield, he can DH I’m not sure yet.

“And as far as Brandon Stone goes, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with him. We just chose to use other guys in those situations. He was available on Sunday or Saturday, but, you know, I thought the other guys were the better guys to use in those situations. But we’ll announce a rotation tomorrow for this weekend, but Brandon Stone will be part of that.”

Henry Kaczmar had two hits tonight, including a two-out double. Can you talk about maybe challenging him to go into that leadoff spot? He also has a 20-game on-base streak now.

“You probably just jinxed him, by the way. Henry had a really slow start to the season, and he’s actually gotten better as we started the SEC schedule. I mean, it doesn’t take a long memory to remember when he was hitting in the low one hundreds, playing all the non-conference teams at the beginning of the schedule. And it’s like, once we started into SEC play, he’s just been swinging the bat so much better with confidence. And, I mean, early in the year, it wasn’t even hitting the ball good and batting practice. And now, you know, he looks like the guy that we saw when we decided to recruit him, and he’s just been tremendous. Is not only offensively, but his defense has been outstanding. He’s just playing the way that we thought he would play, but he got off to a slow start, but he’s leading our team in hitting and SEC games. He’s hit some home runs. He’s driven in, I think, more runs than anybody on our team, in SEC games. He led off at Ohio State during his career there, and we started the season with him hitting in the two hole here, and when he really started to struggle, I just wanted to take a lot of pressure off of him, so I moved him down in the order, and he really flourished in the nine hole. But he’s much better than being a nine-hole hitter. And when Nathan went down, you know, it seemed like the natural move to put him in the leadoff spot, and he’s to continue to do very well there. So I’m really proud of Henry, and, you know, hopefully he’ll keep it up the rest of the year.”

Just a more general question for you. I’ve noticed Terry Rooney and you have taken mound visits, maybe when guys are doing well, striking out guys, as opposed to maybe when they’re falling behind in counts, aren’t throwing a lot of strikes. I’m just curious, is there a kind of reason for that?

“Terry’s the one who goes out there, typically. I don’t think I’ve done that. So I think it’s more to do with how he wants to attack the next hitter in the situation that we’re in, and just kind of getting the pitcher to refocus on the next batter after he’s done well against the previous guy, and just make sure that he’s got his game plan for what he wants to do with that the next guy. So it has more to do with strategy than anything.”

You’re going into the second half of SEC play. From what you’ve seen from this team, can you guys be a spoiler in the second half? Do you see this team perhaps maybe being a dangerous team for some in the second half?

“That’s a good question. I really appreciate the way you phrased it. I don’t really want to be anybody’s spoiler. I only care about our own team and, you know, getting this program to where we want it to be. And, you know, listen, you are, which are, you know, we’re two and 13 in conference play. We played three of the five series on the road at some pretty difficult places. And Arkansas swept us, and Texas A&M swept us. We won one out of three at Mississippi State, and we had two home series. And one of those home series was against the defending national champion, who was number one in the country at the time. So it’s been a really, ridiculously difficult schedule. Obviously, it always is in the SEC, but it just seemed like these first five weekends were something even beyond that.

“But if you really go back and analyze it, and I’ve said this before the season, I’m sure you all remember that your season gets defined by how you do in the close games and the one, one and two run games, you know, in game three against Oklahoma, after we split the first two games, we had a two run lead going to the ninth inning, we gave up two and then a home run in the 10th inning, obviously, we were in a position to win that game. You know, you go to Arkansas, you know that they’re an unbelievably powerful team. It was like playing Texas A&M in College Station, playing Arkansas in Fayetteville, and they were just, you know, they were just all over pitching. But then the game three, you know, we got to tie a game in the eighth inning, and we got, I think we had the bases loaded and one out and a chance to take the lead, and if you get six outs, you win the game. Okay, who knows what would have happened, but we don’t get the run in. And then, you know, bring in our closer and that, you know, walk to run homer, and the score was not indicative of the kind of game it was. We were right there. And so there’s two games right.

“And then Tennessee, you know, we got it. Was it, you remember the game where Brandon Stone was in the game at the end? I mean, after six innings, we brought in Brandon. It was like this, exactly as I dreamt it up. You know, our starting pitcher pitched great for six innings. We got a lead going into the seventh inning, and he gets a clean seventh inning, and then the eighth inning, they had a two-run homer. We came back and tied the game. Had a chance to take the lead, or maybe we did take the lead, I can’t remember. And then in the ninth inning, the kid hits a home run, and we end up losing. And then you go to Mississippi State, and we had a chance to win a game there, or we did win a game, we had a chance to win another game. And then this past weekend, I mean, we lost two walk-off games. So I’m not saying it’s closer than it appears. I’m just saying that there was five or six games here that were in the balance that could have gone the other direction. And if you turn around three of those games, or four of those games, you know you’re, you’re not proud of being, you know, five and 10 or six and nine or seven and eight, but you’re got your head above water, you know what I mean.

“And we just have been snakebit, and we just haven’t been able to close out games. And you know, some of that is, you know, the opponent, the quality of the opponent, the environment that you’re in, and some of it is our own fault. And, you know, so listen, the kids showed that they’re they’re not giving up, you know, we came back again and played a good game after the difficult loss, after a difficult weekend, and we’re going to go out there Thursday night against Mississippi, against Ole Miss, and we’re going to play as hard as we possibly can. We’re going to compete as hard as we can. Ole Miss is another Top 10 team coming in, you know. So listen, there. They got tremendous talent, great arms, great lineup, and you know, we’re just going to take it one game at a time. It’s all you can do is just keep encouraging the kids and going out there and fighting like crazy. And that’s what we’re going to do for the rest of the year. I think we have, what, 18 games left, is that right? Five series and three more midweek games, and we’re just going to fight like crazy, and then we get to go to the SEC Tournament. My goal has always been for our teams to get better as the year goes on. We have a chance to do that. We’ll see. We’ll see how it goes.”

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