South Carolina Gamecocks AD Explains Reasoning to Keep Paul Mainieri

South Carolina Gamecocks athletic director Jeremiah Donati explains the decision to keep Paul Mainieri.

The South Carolina Gamecocks are coming off of a dissapointing season on the baseball diamond. They finished second to last in the SEC after making it to the regionals last season. Head coach Paul Mainieri received quite a bit of backlash during his first season as head coach, but South Carolina has decided to move forward with the head ball coach.

Athletic director Jeremiah Donati recently explained the decision in an interview and here is what he had to say.

“The decision was this,” Donati told The State. “At this level, you don’t hire coaches on one-time tryouts. You make a commitment to the coach. You invest in the coach. And you’ve got to give them a little runway to prove that they can lead the program.

“Sometimes when you’re transitioning,” Donati added, “there’s a lot of things that need to be changed within the program — whether it’s from the culture or the personnel. And so those just take time.”

Donati also mentioned that he is confident the program will only continue to get better under Mainieri, but that everyone involved needs to be better.

“Obviously it was a disappointing season and we, as a program, expect more,” Donati said. “We will get better. And it’s not one thing, it’s a lot of things. We need to coach better, we need to play better, we need to recruit better as a program. And so we’re committed to doing those things. We’ve got plans to do those things and have already started working through those plans.”