Scott Davis: Here's to great expectations for Gamecock Baseball

Scott Davis has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter year-round and a column during football season that’s published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com.

Following is this week’s Scott Davis newsletter. To receive it each Friday, sign up here.

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It’s different for South Carolina baseball.

We respond differently. We care differently. We think differently.

Over the years, whenever the university has decided to move on from head coaches in football or men’s basketball, the feedback I’ve gotten from readers has typically been all over the map. There’s hope. There’s optimism. There’s excitement and nervousness and worry.

But almost always, filtering in amidst the anticipation, I hear responses like these: Who exactly do we think we’re going to get that will be better than (whoever we just fired)?

Who do we think we are? What, do we think Nick Saban is going to coach here or something? Isn’t this South Carolina?

Most Gamecock fans believe we can win at the highest level here, in every sport. But a few? Well, a few have constructed some elaborate and superbly built ceilings that limit what they think is possible in sports like football and men’s basketball. There are a handful of us that just don’t believe we’re capable of much more than mediocrity in those sports.

I don’t agree with them, of course.

But what’s interesting is that they always disappear when baseball season rolls around.

When it comes to baseball, we all expect more than mediocrity.

That’s because we’ve seen more than mediocrity. We’ve seen championships. We’ve seen winners. We seen conference titles and trophies and triumph after triumph.

Current athletic director and former head baseball coach Ray Tanner certainly saw his share of triumphs: His teams won two national titles, appeared in the College World Series six times and brought home three SEC championships.

But the legacy extends beyond even Tanner. Bobby Richardson led a South Carolina team to the College World Series. June Raines – who helmed the program for 20 seasons before giving way to Tanner – took the Gamecocks to Omaha three times.

And so when word started filtering down that South Carolina would be letting coach Mark Kingston go after the team ended its season in the Raleigh regional, I knew I’d hear a lot of things from fans.

But I wouldn’t hear this: Who do we think we could get that would be better than the last guy?

And I didn’t.

Time for a Homer

Coaching searches move at the speed of light in our challenging college sports landscape that includes NIL money, the Transfer Portal, social media and recruiting gossip.

So by the time you read this, South Carolina may have already announced a new hire and we may be looking forward to a jubilant and celebratory press conference.

As of the writing, plenty of candidates are still in play, including some who have led teams to Omaha already, and others who’ve been on the cusp of doing so. There are also a few favorite sons from the Gamecock baseball family – current interim coach Monte Lee and former South Carolina legend and current North Greenville head coach Landon Powell – in the mix.

I have thoughts. You have thoughts. We all have thoughts.

Ultimately, though, Ray Tanner is paid to make this decision, and you can rest assured that he already knows just how important this one is. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

An athletic director makes his legacy first and foremost through the coaches he hires. Facilities and resources and fundraising and generating optimism are important. But hiring coaches is what keeps an AD employed.

For Tanner, the results have been mixed thus far. Lamont Paris seems well on his way to revitalizing men’s basketball. In football, there’s still plenty of faith that Shane Beamer can lead the program to a promised land that utterly eluded previous Tanner hire Will Muschamp.

But baseball? The school’s signature sport and the program that Tanner built with his own two hands is no longer a standard-bearer. Tanner tabbed longtime assistant Chad Holbrook to succeed him when he stepped away from the dugout and into an office in the Rice Athletics Center, and the hire was universally praised by fans and the media at the time.

It should’ve worked. But for whatever reason, Holbrook couldn’t deliver a consistent winner.

And when Kingston was plucked from relative obscurity after a stint as head coach at South Florida, the mood and the vibe was a bit less festive and a lot more anxious. Kingston had done some nice things at South Florida, but he wasn’t exactly a scalding hot coaching commodity, and after all…

This was South Carolina.

This was championship baseball.

This was Omaha or bust.

It didn’t help that Kingston wasn’t exactly an electrifying personality in the dugout or at press conferences. And seven years and several up-and-down baseball seasons later, Kingston’s gone.

Now there’s no room left for a Strike Three.

Don’t Stop Believing

I get it.

Fans can be absolutely ridiculous sometimes.

Fans can be absolutely ridiculous a lot of the time.

We don’t just want to win, we want to dominate. We want to win and look good doing it. We want to win the way we want to win.

We want coaches who deliver W’s like clockwork, but who also tell us how much they love us and tell us how much they enjoy living in South Carolina and tell us they never really wanted to be anywhere but Columbia, wearing garnet and black.

We expect nothing short of everything.

This is total insanity and I get it, man. I. Get. It.

But you know what?

I’m glad there’s at least one sport that our fans insist on getting right.

I’m glad there’s at least one sport where we expect everything and nothing short of it.

I’m glad there’s at least one sport where we can all join hands, look each other in the eyes and say to each other, “This is ours, dammit.”

At South Carolina, that sport is baseball.

If there are great expectations surrounding Ray Tanner’s next hire, they exist in large part because Tanner himself created them when he roamed Founders Park. I hope whoever leads this program is ready to bask in and welcome those expectations.

This was the sport that belonged to us. This was our thing. This was what we had.

And if it’s going to belong to us again, this next head coach must be prepared to embrace great expectations.

Tell me what you think about the South Carolina coaching search by writing me at at [email protected]. (Please do not reply to this email.)

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