Everything Mark Kingston said after South Carolina's 8-3 loss on Saturday
Following an 8-3 loss to Missouri on Saturday, South Carolina head coach Mark Kingston spoke with GamecockCentral to break the game down. Here’s what he had to say.
On how much of an impact the injury to Missouri’s starting pitcher had on the game plan
“Yeah, look, it’s a challenge, but we should be able to overcome that challenge. That was their best guy on the mound they had going. We had a good game plan against him. Unfortunately, he got injured. Hope he’s okay. They brought in a guy behind him that was the exact opposite, and we didn’t make good adjustments against him. We allowed him to pitch deep into the game. We’re better than that. We didn’t have the right approach, I think that we have when we really play well. We just weren’t quite as good today and that’s how we lost the game.”
On what went wrong with the hitting approach today
“We’ve been doing a great job lately of swinging at the right pitches and taking the pitches that can’t be hit hard. And today, we didn’t do that as well as we’ve been doing it. He used that to his advantage. He kept the fastball up in the zone and he kept his off speed pitches down. We just weren’t sharp today.”
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On Eli Jones’ struggles on the mound today
“His stuff just hasn’t been as good lately, and we’ve got to figure out why. We’ve got to figure out how to get his stuff back to what it was earlier in the year. He just hasn’t been as sharp lately, the stuff hasn’t been what it was. So we’ve got to figure out the reason. Nobody works harder than Eli. Nobody wants it more than him. So we’ve just got to find a way to help him.”
On if the move from starting Jones on Friday to Saturday has had any impact on his struggles
“No, no. Not at all.”
On the offensive struggles in general today
“They did a good job of using our aggressiveness against us. We just need to do a better job of relying on the things that help us to be the offense we’ve been for the last two weeks. Just weren’t as sharp today.”
On how much of an impact the defensive mistakes had on Jones’ start and the game
“It didn’t help for sure. He could’ve gotten out of that first inning with just two runs on that ground ball to the right side. Look, if you put guys in new positions, every now and then that might rear its ugly head. It did today. So we’ll learn from it and be better tomorrow.”
