‘Restore that glory again’: New USC baseball coach Paul Mainieri is serious about winning

Newly hired South Carolina baseball coach Paul Mainieri made a lot of jokes during his introductory news conference on Thursday afternoon in Columbia.

Topics included “recruiting” his wife of 44 years, Karen; his visit to South Carolina as high school recruit in the 1970s; and an early dig at his newest biggest rival, Clemson (“Am I allowed to say that name, or do I have to refer to them as the team up north?).

When it came to expectations, though, he wasn’t in a laughing mood.

“I didn’t come here to lose,” Mainieri, the former national championship-winning LSU coach hired to replace Mark Kingston at USC earlier this week, said Thursday. “I didn’t come here to be mediocre. Carolina baseball represents excellence.”

And to Mainieri, that means winning. Now.

“Look, I don’t have a three-year plan,” he said. “I don’t have a five-year plan. I’ve got a one-year plan. The kids that are on this team that only have one year of eligibility, they don’t care about two years from now or three years from now.

“We’re going to go out there and do the very best we can this coming year. … I don’t see why we can’t compete for everything out of the gate.”

That was a familiar theme during Mainieri’s introduction: Embracing expectations. Gamecocks baseball isn’t a typical college program. South Carolina has a distinguished history in the sport, and current athletic director Ray Tanner made NCAA super regionals, trips to the College World Series and national championships the standard for USC during his 16-year tenure.

USC, though, hasn’t reached that coveted stage in Omaha since Tanner’s last season in 2012, and two other coaches — Chad Holbrook and Kingston — won well over 50% of their games and made NCAA runs and reached super regionals but ultimately couldn’t reach that lofty standard.

So Tanner, making his third baseball head coaching hire since he transitioned to athletic director 12 years ago, is now reaching into his baseball past to position the program for the future.

“It’s mind-boggling to think how much he’s won,” Tanner said. “To me, he’s one of the best, one of the greatest. It’s a tremendous opportunity for us here at the University of South Carolina to have Paul Mainieri leading our baseball program.”

Distinguished track record

Mainieri arrives at South Carolina as the NCAA’s all-time leader in active wins with 1,505 across 39 years at four schools (St. Thomas, Air Force, Notre Dame and LSU) and a championship pedigree that includes a 2009 national title with LSU and 2017 CWS runner-up finish.

The university is paying him as such. USC’s Board of Trustees governance committee approved Mainieri’s hiring and contract in a meeting Tuesday and gave him a five-year deal with an annual salary of $1.3 million, the largest ever for a Gamecocks baseball coach.

Mainieri was a bit of a surprise candidate in South Carolina’s week-long coaching search, which (at least publicly) centered around younger candidates such as East Carolina’s Cliff Godwin, Duke’s Chris Pollard and USC interim coach Monte Lee, who will remain on Mainieri’s staff.

Even Mainieri himself admitted he “couldn’t have imagined” standing at USC’s Cockaboose Club and delivering an opening monologue as the school’s next baseball coach one week ago — which was around the time Tanner called to pick his brain about some potential candidates.

As Tanner recalled it, he made that call knowing that Mainieri, despite retiring from the sport at LSU in 2021 because of health issues, wasn’t done with college baseball. Less than a year after stepping away, he’d interviewed for the Notre Dame job. The next cycle, he talked with Miami.

“I didn’t know whether he’d ever entertain the conversation or just tell me about the candidates I was asking him about,” Tanner said. “Of course, I wiggled into the conversation: ‘How about you?’ He was very, very interested and excited about that. Listening to him and knowing him like I do, the last chapter had not been written.”

Added Mainieri: “Ray’s still got the recruiting ability. I can promise you.”

After 15 seasons at LSU — perhaps one of the only other schools, SEC or otherwise, with South Carolina’s combination of baseball fandom, interest and expectations — Mainieri said he’ll welcome criticism as he goes all in on trying to get the Gamecocks (who were 37-23 last season and lost in regionals) back to Omaha, where the 2024 College World Series starts Friday.

“I don’t see any reason why we can’t restore that glory again,” Maineiri said. “If we recruit the right players, coach in the right way, be dedicated to them and they’re dedicated to the team, I don’t see any reason why you should put limits on what we can accomplish.”

Is he the right fit in 2024?

At 66, Maineiri is the oldest coach South Carolina has ever hired in a “big four” sport — football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball — since it joined the SEC in 1992.

And he has minimal experience with the transfer portal and name, image and likeness, two tools that have changed college baseball recruiting and roster construction forever.

But Maineiri, who turns 67 in August, brushed off concerns about his age, health and adapting to a new era of the sport. After a number of corrective surgeries to fix the health issues that promoted him to retire (chronic neck pain and headaches), he said he feels rejuvenated.

“Like I’m 40 years old,” Mainieri said.

An assistant coaching staff of Lee, former LSU assistant Terry Rooney and former Virginia assistant John Hendry, he said, will also keep him young — and help lead South Carolina baseball through 2025 and beyond with a modern approach on the portal and NIL.

“We’re going to get this thing figured out,” Mainieri said. “We’re going to have a really good plan going forward, and I’ll become more and more involved as time goes on.”

A veteran of the sport who’s been coaching since 1983 and missed the game enough to work as a special advisor to his local community college baseball team in Baton Rouge last year while retired, Mainieri said he considers getting South Carolina baseball back to a national championship level (and to the top of the SEC) his final challenge in the sport.

“Listen, Bobby Richardson and June Raines and Ray Tanner, all the great coaches of the past, they didn’t work so hard to build a mediocre team,” he said. “They’re not happy with mediocrity, and nor will I. I look at this as my last go-around. I’m not working anywhere after here, OK? This is it. So I think we need to win now. I think we should go for it.”