The South Carolina baseball team is entering a new era, as the Gamecocks officially hired Kevin Schnall as its new head coach. The hire comes as a breath of fresh air, as the Gamecocks finished with a program-low 35 losses, as head coach Paul Mainieri resigned early in the season. Schnall was hired from Coastal Carolina, spending the last two seasons as the Chanticleers' head coach and serving as a longtime assistant there.
Now that the Schnall hire is official, he has officially started to build his coaching staff. Some hires like Bill Cilento and Matt Williams had been previously reported and written about on this site. But on Friday, eight new hires to Schnall's staff were officially announced by South Carolina.
Among those announced hires were several names who were with Schnall at Coastal Carolina, where he finished 93-36 as a head coach, and went to the CWS Finals last season. One of those is former Coastal associate head coach Chad Oxedine, who will also serve as the Gamecocks' outfield coach. Oxendine was also Coastal's recruiting coordinator.
Former Chanticleers pitching coach Matt Williams is also officially joining the Gamecocks, where he had one of the nation's best pitching staffs last season for Coastal. The Chanticleers finished the 2025 season ranked second nationally in both earned-run-average and WHIP, as well as an impressive 3.22 team ERA. Also joining Schnall from Coastal is Tyler Shewmaker, who will be South Carolina's new recruiting coordinator as well as catching coach. He also spent the last two seasons at Coastal as the team's director of player development and recruiting.
Fellow Coastal coaches who followed Schnall include director or pitching development Dylan Eskew, who served in the same role for the Chanticleers this past season. This is a homecoming for Eskew, who played and pitched for the Gamecocks from 2023-2025.
Matt Pepin and Mickey Beach are also coming over from Coastal, with Pepin serving as the team's director of analytics and Beach the director of baseball operations. Coastal's director or speed and strength and conditioning for the last three years, Michael Thompson, is also coming aboard. He will be South Carolina's director of baseball performance.
But there is one big hire Schnall made that isn't from Coastal Carolina. A huge hire for him was landing longtime Wake Forest assistant Bill Cilento as the Gamecocks' new hitting coach. Per Cilento's Wake Forest bio, he has helped 64 players get drafted in Major League Baseball, including 14 getting selected inside the Top-50.
Some of the guys he has coached include former San Francisco Giant Mac Williamson, who transitioned as an outfielder at Wake, and former first-round draft pick Will Craig of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Cilento helped Wake Forest make it to the College World Series in 2023, as well as several Regional and Super Regional appearances during his tenure.
Schnall hiring an elite staff has been one of his main priorities since he arrived in Columbia.
“Number one is the staff,” Schnall told the school. “We have to assemble an elite coaching staff; a staff that would rival any coaching staff in the entire country."
It sounds like Schnall has a solid mix of both veteran Coastal coaches and new faces for his first staff in Columbia. Congrats to all on officially becoming Gamecocks!
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