The South Carolina baseball team’s season came to a close last weekend in the NCAA Regional tournament, capping a turbulent season for the Gamecocks.

The team ended the season 37-25 (13-17 SEC) and fired head coach Mark Kingston after seven years in charge of the program. The end of South Carolina’s season means Kingston and the Gamecocks fell short of their preseason goal of hosting an NCAA Super Regional site.

South Carolina made it to the Super Regionals last season but was not selected as a host site. Instead, they had to travel to Gainesville, Fla. to take on the Florida Gators, where they were swept in two games.

Kingston said that he wanted to host a Super Regional site because it would give them the best chance at getting to the College World Series in Omaha, Neb.

“Baseball is a game of playing the odds, and the odds are much greater (at getting to Omaha) if you’re at home,” Kingston said.

In the regionals, Eli Jones got the start for the Gamecocks in their first game against the JMU Dukes. South Carolina’s poor defensive displays carried over from the SEC Tournament, as they allowed an unearned run to score in the first inning. 

South Carolina tied this game three different times but could not seem to get over the hump and surpass JMU. Cole Messina tied the game in the ninth inning in dramatic fashion.

There were two outs, Messina had two strikes and South Carolina was still down two runs when he turned on a pitch and hit a two-run homerun to tie the game.

With each team tied at seven after nine innings, the game went to extra innings and the Gamecocks won the game from a sacrifice fly off the bat of Will Tippett. 

“I’m not like a fortune teller, I can’t pick and choose when they walk me,” Messina said. “I just had to stay locked in and stay focused and took a good swing.”

The Gamecocks faced regional host N.C. State in the second game of the tournament. Garrett Gainey, the typical closer for South Carolina, got the starting nod against the Wolfpack.

Gainey pitched 6.0 innings and gave up four runs, all of which were earned.  South Carolina was once again playing from behind for most of this game but managed to tie it twice.

The Gamecocks surrendered a run in the first inning but tied it in the top of the third at one run apiece. N.C. State then scored two more runs in the bottom of the third.

South Carolina answered in the top of the fifth by scoring one run of their own, before giving up another run to the Wolfpack in that very same inning.

In the seventh, Dylan Brewer hit a two-run homerun to draw the game level at four. This was Brewer’s second home run of the game. 

“I was just happy to be out there,” Brewer said. “This is my fifth year and I just want to win, you know, and I love playing with this group of guys so I’m just happy about that.”

Despite Brewer’s heroics, South Carolina surrendered a run in the bottom of the second, giving the Wolfpack a 5-4 lead. N.C. State added an insurance run in the eighth inning, ending the scoring for the day, and N.C. State advanced to the Regional final. 

“Teams have come through the losers [bracket],” Kingston said. “Teams have lost this game and still went on to win a regional, so that’s the only place I want our guys’ heads.”

With their backs against the wall, South Carolina turned to Dylan Eskew for their second matchup against James Madison.

Eskew pitched 5.1 innings, only allowing one run to score, a home run off the bat of JMU’s Mike Mancini. Despite Eskew’s good outing against the Dukes, the offense only amassed five hits in the contest, getting shutout as a result. 

“I felt good, just tried to give the team everything I had,” Eskew said. “I knew our backs are against the wall having to win three straight, so [I] told coach Matt and King that ‘I’ll give you guys everything.’”

Tyler Pitzer came on in relief of Eskew in the sixth inning, pitched 2.0 innings and gave up only one run, which was also a home run off the bat of Mike Mancini.

Parker Marlatt pitched the final two outs of the game after Pitzer was pulled, and the Gamecocks were sent home before reaching the Regional final game.

“It was a good season,” Kingston said. “I don’t think any time you make the NCAA Tournament out of the SEC you can call it a failure. Still, we want to get better, obviously. We still want to be getting further in the postseason than we did.”

The Dukes and the Gamecocks tallied the same amount of hits in the final game, but South Carolina’s absence of hitting with runners in scoring position throughout the weekend was the nail in the coffin for the Gamecocks. In 19 at-bats with runners in scoring position, South Carolina failed to get a single hit (.000).

Following the loss to JMU, Ethan Petry attributed some of the offensive woes to overswinging and “trying to do too much” at the plate.

“He had his stuff, obviously, and just threw a lot of strikes,” Petry said. “We were just trying to do too much on a guy that, you know, didn’t have a lot of velocity and we just tried to overswing.”

Now into an earlier offseason than predicted, South Carolina has moved on from Mark Kingston as head coach. Kingston went 217-155 overall (.583), and 83-96 SEC (.464) during his tenure. He led the Gamecocks to four regional appearances, with two super regional appearances and zero College World Series appearances. 

Kingston had signed a previous five-year extension shortly following the end of the 2023 season where the Gamecocks made it to a Super Regional, and were ranked as high as No. 3 in the regular season.