since we aren’t playing them this year - which is weird to me.
They’re 5-17 after having lost to Florida last night and seem destined to finish in 15th place.
Paul Mainerie was a hire out of left field for them last year. I don’t think anyone anticipated that being more than a few year term, maybe 2-3 years. I’m wondering though if they go ahead and pull the plug after this season. Mainerie has a great resume, but I don’t know that he’s really equipped for this era of college baseball.
Earlier this week he said in an interview that he underestimated the strength of the SEC - https://www.si.com/college/southcar...stimated-the-strength-of-the-sec-01jt3j7cp2c5
While I appreciate the candor, he last coached in the SEC in 2021. We have two players on our team (Charlie Goldstein and Colin Caldwell) who played here in 2021. It wasn’t THAT long ago. That comment makes me wonder how involved he was there at the end at LSU - how much he was really doing the day-to-day stuff as opposed being the face and figurehead.
I don’t care about South Carolina, but it’s still interesting to me what they are now. Early 2010s they were the gold standard. You can’t say enough about the job Ray Tanner did there. People obviously remember 2010 and 2011, those titles. South Carolina made it to the national championship series in 2012 without a single player on Baseball America’s first or second All American team. I am not suggesting that group wasn’t talented, they were, but they just a “culture” and knew how to win. That went away when Tanner left.
Chad Holbrook was the logical successor, but you could see the cracks starting in 2013. I thought that Kingston was a bad hire in that moving from Central Florida to South Carolina would prove too steep. Both of those were Tanner’s hires - at least to the extent that Tanner was the AD. But then Mainieri just seemed non-sensical to me.
It’s weird not playing South Carolina and it’s weird seeing them this bad.
They’re 5-17 after having lost to Florida last night and seem destined to finish in 15th place.
Paul Mainerie was a hire out of left field for them last year. I don’t think anyone anticipated that being more than a few year term, maybe 2-3 years. I’m wondering though if they go ahead and pull the plug after this season. Mainerie has a great resume, but I don’t know that he’s really equipped for this era of college baseball.
Earlier this week he said in an interview that he underestimated the strength of the SEC - https://www.si.com/college/southcar...stimated-the-strength-of-the-sec-01jt3j7cp2c5
While I appreciate the candor, he last coached in the SEC in 2021. We have two players on our team (Charlie Goldstein and Colin Caldwell) who played here in 2021. It wasn’t THAT long ago. That comment makes me wonder how involved he was there at the end at LSU - how much he was really doing the day-to-day stuff as opposed being the face and figurehead.
I don’t care about South Carolina, but it’s still interesting to me what they are now. Early 2010s they were the gold standard. You can’t say enough about the job Ray Tanner did there. People obviously remember 2010 and 2011, those titles. South Carolina made it to the national championship series in 2012 without a single player on Baseball America’s first or second All American team. I am not suggesting that group wasn’t talented, they were, but they just a “culture” and knew how to win. That went away when Tanner left.
Chad Holbrook was the logical successor, but you could see the cracks starting in 2013. I thought that Kingston was a bad hire in that moving from Central Florida to South Carolina would prove too steep. Both of those were Tanner’s hires - at least to the extent that Tanner was the AD. But then Mainieri just seemed non-sensical to me.
It’s weird not playing South Carolina and it’s weird seeing them this bad.
