South Carolina baseball is making shockwaves and is set to hire former Notre Dame and LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri as the program’s newest head coach, Baseball America’s Teddy Cahill first reported on Monday evening.
Vol fans are familiar with Mainieri, who had multiple run ins with Tennessee in his final season at LSU’s head coach in 2021. The Tigers played at Tennessee twice that season. The Vols swept LSU in Knoxville in mid March. The ensuing week, Mainieri called the Tennessee supporters at Lindsey Nelson Stadium “nasty fans. Nasty. Nasty.”
LSU returned to Knoxville in mid-June for the super regionals where Tennessee seemingly ended Mainieri’s coaching career by sweeping the Tigers in two games.
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Ahead of the NCAA Tournament series, Mainieri apologized for his comments about Tennessee fans.
“First of all, I want to apologize for those comments that I made a couple of months ago,” Mainieri said. “I think they were blown way out of proportion. I didn’t mean in any way to criticize the people of Tennessee. I love the people in Tennessee. I stuck my foot in my mouth and made some comments that I really didn’t think about before I said them. I didn’t mean in any way to criticize Tennessee people. They’re wonderful people.”
In his 39 total seasons of a head coach (Air Force, Notre Dame and LSU), Mainieri has posted a 1,505-777-8 record. In his 15 seasons at LSU, Mainieri posted a 641-285-3 record and won the 2009 National Championship and lost in the championship series again in 2017.
Now Mainieri looks to find another successful stint in his career at South Carolina. The Gamecocks moved on from Mark Kingston after seven seasons where South Carolina made the NCAA Tournament four times but failed to make it to the College World Series.
