With the regular season ending on a sour note for the South Carolina Gamecocks baseball team, it looks to the SEC tournament to improve its postseason hopes of hosting a site in the NCAA Regional and Super Regional tournaments and improve its chances at getting into the College World Series in Omaha, Neb.

The Gamecocks ended the regular season with a 33-21 (13-17 SEC) record. South Carolina is also on the heels of a six-game losing streak after back-to-back sweeps by then-No. 15 Georgia and No. 1 Tennessee.

This skid has left the Gamecocks unranked in the final regular season poll and has placed them as the No. 10 seed in the SEC tournament. The Gamecocks started the tournament against No. 6 seed Alabama on May 21 after the Chronicle’s press deadline.

Coming into the season, head coach Mark Kingston said that his main goal for this team was to host a Super Regional. Last season, Kingston led the Gamecocks to a Super Regional appearance in Gainesville, Fla., where they were bested by the Florida Gators in two games.

“I think last year was a really good year for us to kind of show that we’re getting this thing exactly where we want it to be,” Kingston said during a preseason press conference. “We’ve built on the momentum in the transfer portal, we’ve built on the momentum in recruiting the younger high school kids at this point, and I think the returning players know that [contending for the College World Series] is what we’re capable of doing.”

South Carolina’s journey to the NCAA tournament has not been a smooth one. They have been inconsistent for much of the season, often dropping games on the road, as shown by their 9-10 away record.

Much of this inconsistency has been highlighted by the pitching staff.

Coming into this season, the Gamecocks lost all three of their 2023 season weekend starters to the MLB Draft, which left many question marks around the rotation.

It was presumed that Roman Kimball would be one of the pitchers leading the charge for the rotation, but after a few poor starts from Kimball, he was pushed back to the bullpen. The redshirt freshman ended the regular season touting a 5.86 ERA across 27.2 innings pitched.

“Roman has the ability to be a weekend starter in our league. At his best, he’s [throwing] 95, might touch 96 [miles per hour],” Kingston said during a preseason press conference.

This left Eli Jones and Dylan Eskew to lead the charge for the Gamecocks pitching staff, however, neither posted great numbers either.

Jones led the team in innings pitched with 60.2 and had a 49/18 strikeout to walk ratio, but struggled to keep opposing offenses at bay in recent weeks. The past few weeks of performance have raised Jones’ stats to a .319 batting average against with 82 total hits.

“Obviously, the last three weeks hasn’t been going great,” Jones said before the Tennessee series. “We’re working on some things and trying to find what’s going on, and we think we’re on to a little bit of something.”

Jones followed this with a 2.0 inning relief appearance where he gave up two earned runs on five hits and no walks.

In conference play, the Gamecocks were worse than their opponents in nearly every metric. They had a -15 run differential (188-203), gave up more hits and had a worse slugging percentage.

“We always have a sense of urgency,” Kingston said of the team’s desire to bounce back after Georgia swept them. “The guys know that every day is to be taken advantage of.”

For the Gamecocks to achieve their preseason goal, they must turn all of that around in the SEC tournament.

The Gamecocks faced a rough path standing in between them and a deep run in the tournament. First, they had to face the No. 6 seed Alabama in a single elimination game.

In the meeting during the regular season, the Gamecocks lost the series to Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

If the Gamecocks want to make a run in the NCAA tournament, they needed to play better than they did in the regular season. South Carolina ranked in the bottom half of the SEC for both batting average (.257) and ERA (6.40).

“The regular season’s over and new season starts,” Kingston said on what his message to the team was going forward. “We’ve shown on most days that we can go toe-to-toe with anybody. We’ve got to get over that hump.”

The Gamecock upset Alabama in the first game of the tournament, winning  10-5. In the next round against  No. 2 seed Arkasnas, the Gamecocks continued to shine, winning 6-5.

South Carolina's luck hit a stall Thursday against LSU. The two team's played a thriller  but the Tigers came behind for the win. 

The Gamecocks are still alive, but will need to beat Kentucky in an elimination game on Friday.

Hosting a Super Regional is a long shot for the Gamecocks. Should they win the SEC Tournament and host a Regional, they would have to win almost every game in a convincing fashion to make up for their sub-.500 conference record.

D1Baseball.com’s current projections have the Gamecocks traveling to No. 6 national seed and bitter-rivals, Clemson. They would be the No. 3 seed in that pool of four that is also projected to include the Louisiana Ragin Cajuns as the No. 2 seed, and Army as the No. 4 seed.

“We’ve been staying together all year, you know, we’ve had our ups and downs,” Blake Jackson said. “Just having each other’s backs is kind of what we’ve just been focused on. [We are] not really worried about any article or news or what anyone’s saying.”

South Carolina currently looks unlikely to achieve their preseason goal of hosting a Super Regional tournament and it looks like it will fall short of its preseason expectation of hosting a Regional tournament.