Paul Mainieri admits he 'forgot how hard it is to win college baseball games'

It’s been a difficult first season as the manager of the South Carolina Gamecocks for Paul Mainieri. Now, despite his decades of experience, he’s admitted that after taking a couple of years away from the game, he forgot how hard it is to win college baseball games.

This comes as the 2025 regular season is coming to an end. It does so with South Carolina sitting at 27-26 overall this season and just 5-22 in SEC play. That’s 15th in the current conference standings.

“The conference is just so tough. You know, it’s unforgiving,” Paul Mainieri told Nola.com. “And our schedule in particular was really difficult this year, and it exposed our limitations, where we have them… I forgot how hard it is to win college baseball games, I guess.”

The last time Mainieri competed in the SEC was with LSU in 2021. That season, he led the Tigers to a 13-17 SEC record and the NCAA Regionals. That was part of what had been an incredibly successful career with the Tigers, which included winning a national championship and going to Omaha five different times. Along with that stop, he’s also found success at Notre Dame, Air Force, and St. Thomas.

This season, South Carolina is on the outside looking in at the postseason picture. Still, for Mainieri, there is a comparison to be made to his first season at LSU. The Tigers went just 29–26–1 overall and 12–17–1 in SEC play that season amid a rebuild. The very next year, they made the College World Series and haven’t looked back as a program.

“I told the team that, ‘This will be the last year that LSU was ever taken lightly again,’ ” Mainieri said. “And it’s a pretty bold comment, based upon what had happened in the first year. But I don’t think LSU has been taken lightly again since then.”

The season isn’t over yet, even if making the postseason appears out of reach. The Gamecocks have a final series and the SEC Tournament. Those are important games to Mainieri, who wants to make sure young players get their opportunities.

“If we’re not going to win at a high level, at least I’m going to get these good freshmen a lot of experience and playing time, so it’ll pay off down the road,” Mainieri said. “And it certainly did with that group of guys at LSU…. They’ve had up-and-down moments, just like the kids did way back in the 2007 season. But they’ve also shown what they’re capable of doing at times.”

One challenge for Mainieri is that the game is different. NIL and the Transfer Portal have completely changed how teams are constructed from when he last coached at LSU. Now, there’s an adjustment period that he’s going through.

“When I first got here last summer, we lost a lot of recruiting battles because other schools were giving a more, shall I say, appealing package to kids,” Mainieri said. “That’s the reality of the world we live in now. The schools that have a lot of money and are willing to give it to the players are getting the best players.

Beyond how rosters are built, the players on the rosters are different, too. They’re bigger and stronger, and that’s its own challenge as a coach.

“The strength of the players, the velocities of the pitchers, that has been a big change since I retired four years ago,” Mainieri said. “I was telling someone the other day, we’re beating Ole Miss 5-1 in the sixth inning or something, and they bring a guy in out of the pen throwing 100 miles an hour… I remember when Jaden Hill touched 96 mph in a fall game, and how everybody oohed and ahhed. I remember Alex Lange‘s first pitch of his career (95 mph) … and you could hear the buzz throughout the crowd.”

In the final weekend of the regular season, South Carolina is, naturally, set to take on LSU. It’s going to be a tough series, but it’s also an opportunity to improve and be better moving forward.

“We just have to upgrade and get better, like we did after the first year at LSU,” Mainieri said. “And hopefully we will. We’re all working like crazy on recruiting for next year.”