Everything Mark Kingston said after South Carolina's second straight loss
Following South Carolina’s 11-5 loss to Georgia on Friday, head coach Mark Kingston spoke to the media about the game. Here’s what he had to say.
Opening statement
“Obviously, we fell behind early and that allowed them to control most of the game after that. I thought our guys played really well. McCoy, Pitzer, Becker, we did a really good job. We just fell behind early and made it hard on us. But guys kept playing hard, had good approaches. Just got to flush it.”
On if he’s surprised at the way the team has played in these first two games
“I mean, we know they were really good coming in, and I think we’re really good too. These last two days doesn’t change that. I mean, we’ve scored 15 runs the last two days too. That’s not an offense that’s not playing pretty well right now. But we’ve got to pitch better. That’s obvious. It’s a good offense and we’ve got to figure out why are they on every pitch we are throwing.”
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On what the main issue is right now with the starting pitching
“Look, Eli’s got to be better. He has been better in the past and we need him to be better. Again, nobody works harder than Eli, nobody wants it more than Eli, but he’s just not as good right now as he was earlier in the season. And we need him to be. We have his back. We’ll continue to give him opportunities, but we need better from Eli. He knows that, we know that. And we have his back through that. But we need more production there.”
On if Jones moving around in the rotation has had any impact on his outings or mental state
“No, no, no.”
On if he sees a lineup shake up with Will Tippett back and playing well tonight
“Well, I wouldn’t call it a lineup shake up. Again, this team we’re rolling out there right now is averaging 10 runs a game for the last three weeks. So a shake up would imply we’re going to move two or three guys. Does Will Tippett deserve to play? He played pretty well tonight, I’ll leave it at that.”
On decision to pull Tyler Pitzer in the ninth when he was doing well with 36 pitches
“He was at the end. Matt Williams does a really nice job of knowing where guys are in terms of how many pitches they’ve thrown. And to the naked eye, does it look like they’re running out of gas? Matt generally has a really good feel for that. And he just felt like at that point he had thrown enough.”
On what he’s seeing from Jones over the last few weeks that’s causing his struggles
“The stuff’s just not as good as it was early in the season — it’s just not. We’ve got to find a way to get it back to where it was early in the season cause it’s just not there right now.”
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On if Dylan Eskew will be available to pitch tomorrow after dealing with some stiffness/soreness
“Yeah, he was stiff last week, which is why he had to come out of the game pretty quickly last week. But he is available. Obviously, Gainey’s available, has not thrown a pitch yet. And we stretched him out last week. So we’ve got some good options for tomorrow.”
On if Eskew is feeling better health wise
“Yes.”
On what makes Georgia so difficult to pitch to
“Well, they’re big, they’re strong, they’re experienced. They’ve got five or six guys in the lineup that came into the weekend with double-digit homers. So this isn’t some new phenomenon that they’re scoring runs. They’ve scored runs all year. You just have to find a way to minimize it and make sure you’re on everything that you can do possibly to keep them off balance.”
On what ways he’s looking for the team to respond tomorrow
“This team will bounce back, it always does. That’s why we’re in such a good position from an RPI standpoint cause we always flush whatever happened today and come out ready to play, especially in game threes all year. I expect nothing different tomorrow.”
