Gameco*cks' season is over; is Kingston done as well? (2024)

RALEIGH — The question was created in the offseason. Mark Kingston’s contract was rewritten the way it was for a reason.

After South Carolina was punched out of the Raleigh regional on June 2, losing 2-0 to James Madison, the stopwatch began ticking toward the answer to that question.

Will Kingston return for an eighth season?

“I think everybody at South Carolina wants to win at a high level,” he answered when asked if he thought he had the administrative support to get USC baseball back to where it needs to be.

The resolution is expected to come quickly. With school out and several players moving on to summer-league ball, the timeline has usually called for coaches to meet with their teams the day after the season ends, hold exit meetings with individuals about their outlook for next season and then head out. The transfer portal also opens on June 3 and will remain open until July 2.

Kingston’s contract was amended before this season to give him more years and more money, but his buyout remained untouched. That buyout dropped by 50 percent to $400,000 as USC was being put in the regional loser’s bracket by N.C. State.

Several coaches thought to be candidates if USC makes a move are currently idle as their own teams have ended their seasons, and any coaching search carries with it a desire to end swiftly.

But nobody at USC has officially said, “If Kingston doesn’t do X, he’s gone.” It was certainly understood by everyone involved that this season needed to be strong, and not advancing out of a regional does not appear to meet that criteria, not with the Gameco*cks’ proud history.

“I think every program in the country wants to keep getting better. We’re no different. The SEC is filled with teams that are dumping huge resources in, and I think it’s just a matter of we need to continue to do everything we can to try to give this program what it needs to be successful,” Kingston said. “There are so many parts of our program that are in great shape, great shape. But obviously, we need to keep getting better— bottom line.”

Kingston is 217-155 in seven seasons, 37-25 this year, with two Super Regional appearances, four regionals, two missed postseasons and the COVID year of 2020, when the season ended after 16 games. He is 83-96 in the SEC.

The buzzword under his leadership has been “inconsistent,” the Gameco*cks never able to string together winning streaks or seasons. A win away from the College World Series in 2018, Kingston’s first season, the Gameco*cks missed the postseason in 2019 and had the great majority of the season called off by COVID in 2020.

In 2021, USC hosted a regional but failed to advance from it, and in 2022, again missed the NCAA Tournament. The 2023 season was his best, the Gameco*cks winning 42 games and getting to the super regionals, but an injury-bedecked final month of the regular season cost USC what looked to be a sure national seed and home-field advantage through the postseason.

USC went to Florida for the super regionals and lost each game. Kingston’s two super regional appearances at USC each ended with a loss to the eventual national runner-up (Arkansas in 2018 and the Gators last year).

This year saw USC enter the penultimate weekend series of the regular season knowing that one win probably meant a host spot for the NCAA regionals. The Gameco*cks were swept at home by Georgia, the first SEC home sweep for USC since 2019.

They followed by getting swept at top national seed Tennessee, giving them a six-game losing streak. They had the program’s best showing since 2017 in the SEC Tournament, going 3-2, but it wasn’t enough to avoid traveling for the postseason, where USC went 1-2. The Gameco*cks began the year 20-5 and finished 17-20.

“I thought we had a lot of ups and downs, and I think we had a lot more ups than downs,” said slugger Ethan Petry, who played on Sunday despite a hairline fracture in his pinky. “We’re going to take it into next year and rebuild the team and become great.”

The Gameco*cks won their first game, over JMU, this weekend after being down to their final strike, but they lost to host N.C. State on Saturday. Staring at having to win three games in two days to advance, USC couldn’t even score a run on Sunday.

Included were the Gameco*cks’ eighth and ninth double plays of the regional, which came due to another baserunning blunder when Dylan Brewer was standing in the basepath as a soft liner settled into the second baseman’s glove. USC also had runners at the corners with nobody out in the fifth, but Will Tippett’s bunt to produce that situation was negated due to him being out of the runner’s lane.

The Gameco*cks still got two on in the inning but Cole Messina flied out to end the threat. Petry stood on third with nobody out in the sixth and the Gameco*cks couldn’t score.

JMU pitcher Donovan Burke, who threw 54 pitches against USC on Friday, threw 101 against the Gameco*cks less than 48 hours later. USC couldn’t figure him out.

“Yeah, he’s a very, very heavy ground-ball pitcher,” Kingston said. “It was a quality lefty that matched up well against us today and he got us.”

USC stranded eight runners Sunday and for the regional, finished 0-20 with runners in scoring position. The Gameco*cks wasted a fine Sunday performance from pitcher Dylan Eskew, who lasted to the sixth and only yielded four hits and a run.

“I tried to give the team everything I had,” Eskew said. “Feel like I did that.”

The season ended with a caught-looking strikeout and a shutout. It seemed fitting, for how this season started and how it ended.

Like the Kingston era, there were sporadic good spots, but nothing close to a sustained winning product. The Gameco*cks’ magnificent era of 2010-12, when they played in three straight College World Series finals and won two, gets further and further away.

“It was a good season. But still, we want to get better, obviously. But I don’t think you can call it a failure,” Kingston said. “Only 64 teams made it, we wanted to be one of the last eight. That is very disappointing.”