'We're close': Kingston not satisfied but still confident in South Carolina
For the fourth time in six weekends, South Carolina came up short yet again. The Gamecocks dropped another SEC series, this time to Arkansas, losing in the rubber match on Saturday.
It’s easy to be frustrated seeing that they haven’t been able to consistently win big SEC series. Ever since sweeping Vanderbilt a few weeks back, it’s been an up and down ride for this team. After this weekend, they’re now 9-9 in league play and are tied for fourth in the SEC East.
Even still, everything is in front of South Carolina. It’s not a stretch to say it controls its own fate moving forward. Of course, head coach Mark Kingston isn’t happy with where his team is at. But he knows it’s been as tough of a schedule to get through.
“You look at it from different angles. If you look at it on the surface, 9-9, we want to be better than that. Everybody in the league does,” Kingston said. “But I also look at it, that’s one of the top five or six records in our league right now. And I also look at it as if you look at the teams we’ve played compared to other teams and who they’ve had to play so far. Our schedule is a bear.”
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Kingston brought up a point that South Carolina has played more than half of its games against quad one opponents in the RPI. In those games, the Gamecocks are 10-11. Between playing against quad two to four teams, they’re 17-2.
And there is some merit to him bringing up the hard schedule reasoning. South Carolina has the 10th hardest strength of schedule in college baseball, according to WarrenNolan. Basically every weekend has pinned the Gamecocks with the cream of the crop in the SEC, which makes things that much more challenging.
“I’m not going to give you our resume right now, it’s not that time,” Kingston said. “But if we had played not one of the best schedules in the country, we could easily be 31-8, whatever the record is, easily. But we’re being tested against the best of the best, and we want to be the best of the best.”
While this past weekend wasn’t the result Kingston nor South Carolina wanted, it doesn’t mean it was all bad. In fact, it’s safe to say the team actually hung in well against Arkansas, who is in that upper echlin of teams in college baseball right now.
At the same time, there are no trophies for playing competitive baseball. Everything comes down to wins and losses. But it does mean the Gamecocks aren’t that far off from getting hot and clicking at the right time. And Kingston can see this.
“We’re not where we want to be, we want to be the best team in the country,” Kingston said. “But we’re pretty damn competitive when we play the best in the country, which means we’re close. And it just means we need to keep grinding, keep focusing on the details, and keep pushing each other because we’re that close.”
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From here, the schedule only gets harder for South Carolina. But that does mean there are plenty of chances to get the wins necessary to solidify its standing for the postseason. After all, the Gamecocks are in a good position to potentially host a regional this year.
With four weekends to go, they’ll host Kentucky then travel to face Missouri to open up the May slate. After that, they’ll return home to play Georgia before one last road trip at Tennessee to conclude the regular season.
“As I told the team, the balls on the one-yard line in terms of where we want to be,” Kingston said. “But getting the ball across the goal line is the toughest part. So we’ve just got to keep pushing.”
