South Carolina baseball releases SEC schedule for first year of Paul Mainieri era

South Carolina baseball will begin a new era next spring as head coach Paul Mainieri is back in the college game. After firing former head coach Mark Kingston, the Gamecocks brought in the legendary Mainieri to bring USC back to the heights it experienced under Ray Tanner when Carolina established itself as the top program in the country.

Mainieri and his elite staff of assistants have been working tirelessly to fix the Gamecock roster ahead of the 2025 campaign, and optimism is high among a fanbase that has extremely high standards.

On Thursday, the Southeastern Conference revealed every team's SEC slate of games, meaning the South Carolina baseball team now knows how its conference schedule stacks up for next spring.

The schedule format is changing a bit with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma to the conference, but every team in the league still will play 30 SEC contests each season. For now, the Gamecocks have been matched up with the Kentucky Wildcats and Florida Gators as "permanent rivals," meaning that USC will face off against UK and UF every season. The other 13 SEC teams on the schedule will rotate on and off of Carolina's schedule for the remaining 8 series each season.

Of note for next year's SEC schedule, the Gamecocks will open conference play against new SEC squad Oklahoma at home, will draw the defending National Champion Tennessee Vols at home, as well, and will close out the conference schedule with a series against Coach Mainieri's old team, the LSU Tigers.

The entire SEC schedule for the Gamecocks can be seen below:

March 14th-16th: Oklahoma Sooners
March 21st-23rd: @ Arkansas Razorbacks"
March 28th-30th: Tennessee Volunteers
April 4th-6th: @ Mississippi State Bulldogs
April 11th-13th: @ Texas A&M Aggies
April 17th-19th: Ole Miss Rebels
April 25th-27th: @ Kentucky Wildcats
May 2nd-4th: Florida Gators
May 9th-11th: @ Auburn Tigers
May 15th-17th: LSU Tigers
May 20th-25th: SEC Tournament in Hoover, Alabama