Mark Kingston & Players Discuss Gainesville Super Regional

The South Carolina Gamecocks are coming off the heels of one of the most dominating regional weekend performances any host team had in the regional round, outscoring their opponents 41-11 in three games combined. Now, Mark Kingston squad enters Super Regional weekend just two wins away from a College World Series birth.

For a program where trips to Omaha serve as the expectation, not the exception, this can either be overwhelming and put added pressure on the team or motivate them knowing the bar that the bar they're trying to reach is now within striking distance. According to James Hicks, for this team, it's the latter.

"It's definitely motivating knowing that this is a very storied program and a program that's been here before, but really it's just a team that doesn't wanna be done yet," Hicks stated. "So we're just focusing on what we can do each day to keep going."

What's unique about this series is that both teams are quite familiar with one another, due to the fact they played a three-game series back in late April, a series in which South Carolina swept Florida. The biggest eye-popping stat coming out of that weekend was the 26 walks the Gators' pitching staff issued to the Gamecocks, something that coach Kingston isn't expecting to see this time around.

"It's an elite pitching staff that we have a lot of respect for," he iterated. "They've got probably three first rounders in their weekend rotation, so we're gonna have to earn what we get."

The series this upcoming weekend is expected to be one of the most watched and closely-contested series out of the eight that'll take place, and no matter who winds up moving on, the Gamecocks aren't expecting anything to come easy in Gainesville.

"I think it's two very similar teams with similar identities, probably power driven first," Kingston said. "I think both teams play good defense, and I think we have elite pitchers on both sides," Mark continued. "It's gonna be a two out of three series, it's a small sample size so you hope things go your way, but it's gonna be very competitive."

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