South Carolina has seemingly gotten over the hump, here's what's next
Even when no one really believed it, Mark Kingston saw what others couldn’t. He knew South Carolina was close. They just had to, ask he would say, get over the hump.
After weeks of ups and downs, the Gamecocks finally put it together in a huge series win over Kentucky. From this point forward, they really do control their destiny. They get to decide how this season shapes out.
“It was great to see. Look, that’s a top-five team we played and that seems like all we’ve played for the last six weeks is top-five teams,” Kingston said. “We’ve been talking about getting over that last hump. We’ve been going toe-to-toe with Arkansas and A&M and all these teams. To have the No. 4 team come in that was 15-3 in our league before the weekend, to come in and go 2-1 vs. them, and last night could’ve gone either way too. I think that’s something that will really give our guys some confidence that we really know now, not only can we go toe to toe with anybody, we can beat anybody. And I think that will be important.”
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With three weekends to go in the regular season, South Carolina has a shot to solidify itself for hosting a regional in the NCAA Tournament. But some more series wins could go a long way in becoming a national seed. That would mean it would be able to host a Super Regional as well.
As it stands, the Gamecocks are 29-14 on the year with an 11-10 SEC record. They’re ranked No. 11 in the RPI, which is a system used to rank teams based on wins and losses as well as strength of schedule.
In Quad I games, South Carolina is 12-12 this season. While that might not seem great, it really is considering how tough of competition it plays each week. And that’s being reflected in how it has been received.
“They talk about Quad I wins, that’s something people talk about all the time. But that’s 25 teams, you could play 21, 22, 23, 24 and get full credit for Quad I wins,” Kingston said. “We’re playing No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4. So our Quad I wins in overall games, I think we’re up to 23 or 24, which is as high as anyone in the country.”
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Kingston admittedly looks at the rankings and what South Carolina has to do to host. He’s not blind to it. He sees what’s going on as it’s part of his job as the head coach to know these things.
In the same vein, the players probably also see it too. But Kingston tries to make sure their focus is on winning one game at a time.
“You don’t talk about it with your team that much. You know what you need to do to have those things happen,” he said. “But the message from a coach to the players is here’s what we need to do every day to win a game. And if you do that today and tomorrow and the next day, that stuff starts to take care of itself. But you monitor it just because it’s our job to try to know everything that relates to our team and our program.”
