South Carolina 2025 SEC Baseball Tournament Exit Interview

(Gainesville Sun photo)

By Jake Mastroianni

SEC Tournament Results: L, 11-3 vs. Florida Record: 28-29

There was a lot of excitement among South Carolina fans entering the 2025 season with former LSU head coach Paul Mainieri making his return to college baseball. But after starting 14-3, they won just five of their next 19 games, and only one of those wins was against a conference opponent. 

It’s not as if expectations were high outside of Columbia, the Gamecocks were picked to finish 14th in the conference ahead of only Ole Miss and Missouri. At one point down the stretch it looked like they might finish last in the SEC. 

Ethan Petry getting injured halfway through the SEC season didn’t help. Coming back for another season, he was hoping to take South Carolina back to the postseason and make a deep run. 

He finished the year batting .321 with 10 doubles and 10 home runs in 44 games with a .437 on-base percentage and .590 slugging percentage. 

They had solid contributions from Nathan Hall, Henry Kaczmar, Beu Hollins, and Jase Woita, but as a team, they didn’t generate enough power (3rd fewest home runs) or get on base enough (2nd lowest OBP). 

But the real issue with South Carolina in 2025 was the pitching staff, which finished 15th in the SEC with a 6.31 ERA. It doesn’t help that Eli Jerzembeck missed the second straight season due to injury. 

Brandon Stone didn’t deliver the consistent starts in the rotation that were needed, and while Jake McCoy showed flashes of being a dominant SEC starter at times, he got blown up too often during conference play. 

Dylan Eskew missed nearly a month and wasn’t able to give them the length they needed once he returned. 

What’s next

Technically, all of their main hitters could return for another season, but that seems unlikely. The real task for Mainieri will be finding the pieces in the pitching staff to help them compete. 

If McCoy can take the next step forward, he would be a solid piece, but Jerzembeck is a wild card, having missed two seasons now. 

Assuming Mainieri wants to give it another go, it will be a huge offseason to determine the direction of the program. 

"Yeah, you know, it was a tough year. I'm not used to these kinds of seasons, quite frankly," said head coach Paul Mainieri after the loss to Florida in the 2025 SEC Baseball Tournament. "Got off to a rough start when we lost what we thought was going to be our Friday night starter before the season began, Eli Jerzembeck when he got hurt in preseason. And then shortly after that, Nolan Nawrocki, who we thought would be our second baseman and hit a bunch of home runs, was never really himself, and now he's having knee surgery.

"And then you look at Thomas LeCroy who broke his thumb the second inning of the first game of the year, and never swung the bat the way he could, and when he hurt his hip, he was out for the year. And then, of course, the last month without Petry. I'm not making excuses. It's just reality. We didn't have the depth to overcome some of those things.

"I'm an optimist by nature, and I thought that we would have what it took to compete in this league. Evidently, obviously, we didn't, the way the season went. But it hasn't -- I'm disappointed, but not discouraged. We're working really hard in recruiting. We've already lined up some really, really good players for next year through the junior college ranks. We have a few guys in the freshman class the previous staff had recruited that we're real excited about.

"And then, we're anxious for the transfer portal to open on June 2nd, and we're obviously going to need a lot of players there.

"We've recruited already a really outstanding high school class of 2026, so I think the future is bright for our program. Like I said, I'm disappointed about this year, but I'm not discouraged about the future. We're just going to keep rolling up our sleeves and working hard at it, and hopefully, we're going to be a lot better next year."

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