GamecockCentral Baseball

Former Gamecock pitching coach to follow Kevin Schnall to South Carolina

1mo

Coastal Carolina pitching coach Matt Williams will be following South Carolina’s new head coach Kevin Schnall to Columbia, TheBigSpur’s Jamie Bradford first reported on Tuesday.

Neither of these hires are official yet, as both are pending approval from the school’s Board of Trustees.

This will be Williams’ second stint at South Carolina after spending the 2024 season as the program’s pitching coach. During that year, the Gamecocks’ pitching staff finished with a 5.05 ERA with 588 strikeouts and 260 walks in 532.2 innings of work.

After former South Carolina head coach Mark Kingston was fired following that season, Williams joined Schnall’s staff at Coastal Carolina in 2025.

Your GamecockCentral membership starts at just $1 – and we’ll throw in a complimentary year of access to The Athletic.

It didn’t take him long to make an impact in Conway, helping the Chanticleers win 56 games and finish as the runner-up at the College World Series. Coastal Carolina’s pitching staff ranked second nationally and led the Sun Belt in ERA and WHIP, finishing the year with a 3.22 team ERA, the fifth-best mark in program history.

Williams was named the American Baseball Coaches Association Division I Baseball Assistant Coach of the Year and the D1Baseball.com Assistant Coach of the Year for the job he did in 2025.

Over his 20-plus-year coaching career, Williams has helped 38 pitchers sign professional contracts, including five who have reached the MLB, while mentoring four conference Pitchers of the Year and numerous all-conference selections.

Williams is a South Carolina native who went to Lancaster High School before attending Spartanburg Methodist College, where his sophomore class won 101 games in two seasons and advanced to the NJCAA World Series. He graduated from Limestone College.