Paul Mainieri and South Carolina baseball to face off against former Gamecock coach this fall

South Carolina baseball coach Paul Mainieri is making his mark on his new job already. Despite being the head coach of the Gamecocks for just over a month, the former National Championship-winning skipper is flipping the roster and making plenty of other behind-the-scenes changes to the program.

One of these changes will be seen this fall. Former Gamecock head coach Mark Kingston did not have his team play a fall scrimmage against another team, but Coach Mainieri is making sure that that changes ahead of the 2025 season.

According to an announcement from former South Carolina baseball head coach and current College of Charleston headman Chad Holbrook, the Gamecocks and Cougars will meet up on the diamond this fall for a scrimmage.

Carolina will make the drive down I-26 East on Thursday, November 7th for a 6:00 PM ET first pitch at Patriots Point in Charleston.

Before this fall meet-up, the two Palmetto State programs had not met on the baseball field since 2018 when Mark Kingston was in his first year at the helm of the Gamecocks and Holbrook was in his first season with the Cougars. College of Charleston won the neutral site game (at Spirit Communications Park/Segra Park in Columbia) by a lopsided 9-0 score. USC was 1-hit in the game as the Cougars thoroughly embarrassed the Gamecocks in the mid-week contest.

Holbrook has been at CofC since parting ways with the South Carolina baseball program after the 2017 season. He had been the head coach in Columbia for five seasons, following four years as the top assistant to Ray Tanner in garnet and black. Current Gamecock associate head coach and hitting coach Monte Lee was the head coach of the Cougars from 2009-2015.

The Gamecocks were a 2-seed in the Raleigh Regional in the 2024 season, but their stay in the postseason was a short one. The Cougars, on the other hand, were one of the NCAA Tournament's biggest snubs, getting left out of the field of 64 despite a 41-14 record and 21-5 mark in the Coastal Athletic Association.