The South Carolina Gamecocks recently found its new head baseball coach in former LSU head coach Paul Mainieri.
On Thursday, Mainieri was a guest on the Paul Finebaum Show and discussed similarities between the two programs. He also addressed how he dealt with pressure at LSU and the pressure he will face at South Carolina.
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“I told you, Paul, way back then, and I told this to everybody; when I went to LSU, I didn’t worry about pressure because the pressure was a fear of failure, and I just felt that we were going to succeed. I was going to surround myself with great staff, and we were going to go out and recruit really good players — If we coached those players the right way, motivated, and inspired them, the winning would take care of itself. And for the most part it did during my tenure at LSU.
“I’m pretty proud of the things that we accomplished. Certainly, I would have liked to have won another national championship or two, but those things are kind of hard to win… they’re not that easy at the very end. I thought that we had really good teams that competed for it every year. We went to Omaha five times while I was at LSU… I just never really thought about the pressure.”
Mainieri coached the Tigers from 2007 to 2021, leading them to five College World Series appearances, national champion runner-ups in 2017, and winners of the 2009 college baseball national championship. During his tenure at LSU, he produced 13 first-team All-Americans and more than 20 major leaguers, including MLB superstars, third baseman Alex Bregman and pitcher Aaron Nola.
At South Carolina, Mainieri expects the trend of success he had at LSU to follow him to Colombia. As far as the Gamecocks’ eager fan base, he is not bothered by them one bit. In fact, he appreciates their passion and wants to do right by them like past South Carolina coaches
“I loved the fact that so many people cared about the team and cared about college baseball,” said Mainieri. “And we’re going to have that here at South Carolina, as well. Ray (Tanner) did that years ago by creating the interest. Even before Ray; June Raines was an outstanding coach, (and) Bobby Richardson before him.
“This program is a traditional program. And when you take the reins, it’s like grabbing the keys to a really fancy car. You have a huge responsibility to make the people that follow this program to be proud of it, and that’s what my focus will be on— my focus will be on working with these kids, having them conduct themselves in a first-class way, playing the game the right way, and then making sure that we get enough talent out there on the field that if the kids do that, they will end up winning and we’ll win a lot of games. I’m just one of those guys that I’m very confident in myself, in our players, (and) in our staff.”
South Carolina’s Athletic Department is spearheaded by one of its legendary head coaches, Ray Tanner. Under Tanner, the Gamecocks were a constant threat and fixture in the national championship picture. Now, with the two veteran SEC coaches team together as athletic director and head baseball coach, South Carolina just might have one of the brightest futures on the diamond for years to come.
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