Everything Mark Kingston said after South Carolina's 11-9 loss to Florida
Following an 11-9 loss to Florida on Sunday, South Carolina head coach Mark Kingston spoke to the media. Here’s what he had to say.
On takeaways from today
“We just didn’t pitch as well as we had been recently. Sometimes that happens. Florida took a lot of good swings today, they were on a lot of pitches today. So we’re real proud of the effort there, we scored nine runs again. So I think offensively, we had a great weekend that we can build on. Found another hitter that’s going to be in there every day now, because he’s earned it — Reeves.”
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On Dylan Eskew’s relief outing
“He pitched fine. I mean, looking at his line, three innings, three earned runs. So I’m not going to say that was a great performance. But he gave us a chance, he kept us in the ballgame, and gave us a chance to score runs and get back in the ballgame.”
On Matthew Becker’s short start
“They were just on everything he was throwing. Whether it was fastball, whether it was off-speed, they were just on it. We’ve got to look into that and figure out why. And I know he’ll bounce back. He always does. He’ll bounce back.”
On Dalton Reeves’ weekend at the plate
“He’s a guy that had a pretty nice career, before he got to us. Just had slowly but surely been making improvements defensively, offensively, and now he’s got about as clean a swing as we have, which was very low maintenance. He’s got power, obviously, it’s a very simple swing that he can repeat. So you combine all those things with a guy that’s played a lot of baseball, he’s an older guy. And he’s given us some our best at-bats consistently.”
On getting lesser-used pitchers like Jake McCoy and Michael Polk into the game
“I thought they both did pretty well. I mean, both their stuff was really good. Their guys were going to have to lean on, obviously. As we get deeper into the season, we need to have those kind of arms to help us win big games. And so I thought they both showed the ability to do that.”
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On importance of getting this series win on the road
“Every weekend is big. I mean, we’re not going to play a team that you think is easy to beat, whether we’re at home or on the road. Every team in this league is great. So to have a road series win, it’s huge. I mean, Mississippi State came in here and Florida won the series. And Texas A&M came in here, who I think right now may be the best team in the country, and did not come out of here with a series win. So the fact that we were able to come in here and do that, I think that’ll serve us well as we move forward.”
On the weekend bullpen performance
“I mean, you always give your opponent some credit. But we’ll continue to evaluate what we’re doing. You’ve got to look at the video to get a good feel in real time of what we’re seeing, but you also have to look at the video sometimes so you don’t rush to conclusions. We’ve got good guys back there. And most of the time, they’re doing well, but we always have to keep evaluating.”
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On evaluating the weekend rotation moving forward
“It’s tricky, right? It’s tricky. I mean, we won the series. So that’s a positive, but we’re still looking for some dominance, guys that we know have a great chance to give us six innings when they go out there. I think we’re still looking for that. We’ve got candidates that we keep giving opportunities. It’s a fine line between keep running them out there and looking to make adjustments. And so I think it’s still the challenge of trying to pick between those two things.”
