Everything Mark Kingston said after South Carolina's 9-8 win over Florida
Even in the moments after the win, Mark Kingston still hadn’t caught his breath.
After a 9-8 win over Florida on Saturday, the South Carolina head coach spoke to the media about how the Gamecocks held on. Here’s what Kingston had to say.
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On the win
“Again, we held on, that’s the important thing. I wish it wouldn’t have gotten so close there at the end. But maybe we needed to go through that a little bit just to get a little stronger and more closer as a team. They did a really good job in that eighth inning, making it hard on Mac (Connor McCreery). They were on everything. And luckily, we got out of that inning. And then, Pitzer was really good in the ninth inning. Real happy to see that a freshman you put faith in in such a big situation is able to come through because I think that will help him long term.”
On if he was nervous turning to Tyler Pitzer, a freshman, in the ninth
“I don’t know if nervous is the right word. But I mean, we’re all a bit on edge, right? It’s a big ballgame, a freshman is coming in. And the tying run was at second and the winning run was at first. So yeah, we’re all a little bit nervous. But we don’t have time to be nervous. We have to be thinking and focus on the game. Just happy he came through.”
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On getting the final two outs of the eighth
“I mean, Caglianone is probably, if not the best hitter in the country, in the top two. He’s really good. Even his outs today were really hard. You just have to try to try to mitigate his impact on the game as much as you can, based on the score, based on runners, based on the situation of the game. We walked him the one time to load the bases, we got the sac fly. We were able to minimize the damage in that inning because we walked him and then Shelton hit the sac fly and we got the next guy out. Look, there are times where you can do it and sometimes the game just doesn’t allow it. But I think we did a decent job today trying to minimize his impact.”
On the message to the team after the win
“After that was just you won a really big game on the road. It wasn’t easy. They can’t all be easy. They can’t all be pretty. But every run we got early on in the game we needed at the end. So they just played together. They picked each other up and just really proud of them.”
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On being focused on the task at hand
“We’ve been good on Sundays. Hopefully that continues. They’ve got an All-American on the mound tomorrow. So I’m sure he’ll be very motivated. So we just need to come out tomorrow with the same attitude, the same approach we have had all year because we’ve been pretty good on Sundays.”
On the offensive performance
“Well, we’re performing better. I mean, we still struck out too much today. We could have scored 14 or 15 today. The one inning where we had the bases loaded, nobody out, and they struck out the next three guys. That was a little disappointing. But that’s baseball. It’s going to happen. I’m not going to complain about nine runs on 10 hits.”
On if Dalton Reeves has earned his spot in the lineup
“Safe to say Dalton will be in the lineup tomorrow.”
