South Carolina baseball coach Mark Kingston has been fired after seven seasons. USC announced the decision shortly after 11 a.m. Monday, less than 24 hours after after the Gamecocks bowed out of the NCAA Tournament in the Raleigh Regional. “Mark Kingston will not return as University of South Carolina baseball coach for the 2025 season,” the school announced in a short press release. Assistant coach Monte Lee will serve as the interim head coach, USC said.
Kingston’s USC teams made the NCAAs four times and advanced to two super regionals in his time at the helm but never reached the College World Series. TheBigSpur was the first to report Kingston’s departure.
With the news that South Carolina had parted ways with baseball coach Mark Kingston after seven seasons and another NCAA regional exit, many thought the top candidate the Gamecocks could snag was right in the Carolinas. East Carolina coach Cliff Godwin, according to D1Baseball managing editor Kendall Rogers, was “the biggest guy” South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner could snatch to resurrect the Gamecocks baseball program.
Here are five things to know about Godwin. INSTANT HEAD COACHING SUCCESS After more than a decade of service as an assistant coach for some of the best programs in America — Vanderbilt, LSU, UCF, Ole Miss — Godwin finally earned his first head coaching job in 2014, taking over his alma mater in Greenville, North Carolina. He inherited a program that had missed the NCAA Tournament in each of the previous two seasons and turned the ECU Pirates around in no time.
During his first season, East Carolina won 40 games and played in a regional. A year later, the Pirates advanced to a super regional, losing to Texas Tech in three games. ECU did fail to reach the tournament in 2017 but hasn’t missed since — aside from the COVID-canceled 2020 season.
A decade after he was hired, Godwin is one of the most-respected coaches in college baseball. East Carolina has won the American Athletic Conference in each of the past five full seasons.
It’s made a regional eight times under Godwin and advanced to the supers four times. HAS NEVER BEEN TO OMAHA If there is a criticism of Godwin, it’s that he has yet to take the Pirates to the College World Series. The fact that it is a letdown when East Carolina doesn’t make it to Omaha is perhaps a result of how Godwin has raised the expectations in Greenville.
The Pirates have seemingly had teams capable of making the CWS. Think about this: In five of Godwin’s 10 seasons at ECU, the Pirates have hosted a regional.
Seven times they’ve won more than 40 games. But the NCAA Tournament disappointments have been real. This season, while hosting a regional, the Pirates fell to No.
4-seed Evansville, which became only the ninth 4-seed in 25 years to advance to a super regional. And even the four times when ECU has advanced to a super regional, it hasn’t missed out on Omaha because of a little bit of bad luck. In East Carolina’s four super-regional elimination games, the Pirates were outscored 38-2.
KNOWN AS A GREAT RECRUITER A year ago, East Carolina brought in the 23rd-best recruiting class in the country, a feat even more impressive when you see who was behind the Pirates.
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