SEC Baseball Weekend Recap: South Carolina hits a new low

South Carolina Athletics

By Chris Marler

It was an eventful first weekend of SEC play. Texas finally lost a game, several teams lost all three games, and the only thing more infuriating than the Vandy whistler in Nashville this weekend was the LSU pitching.

Paw-Pawl Mainieri has ruined South Carolina baseball

South Carolina was awful at baseball last season. Fans were furious, longtime boosters were furious and Paul Mainieri was too busy speaking nonsense in his pre and post-game pressers to hear most of it. Luckily for Mainieri, he wasn’t fired after year one, despite going 6-24 in conference play.

Mainieri wasn’t met with a pink slip, he was met with a green light for more resources. Not just a little more, either. South Carolina baseball was given an operating budget that ranks seventh in the country, one of the highest NIL budgets in the SEC to help secure the fourth ranked transfer portal class in the country.

South Carolina was bad at baseball last season and South Carolina is bad at baseball this season. There seems to be a common denominator, and his last name has almost as many vowels as his team has wins in SEC play over the last two seasons.

This weekend they were swept by Florida. That result wasn’t shocking, maybe even expected. But the way it happened felt like a new rock bottom. South Carolina scored three runs all weekend. All three came on Sunday in game three. In their first two games they lost 1-0 and 2-0 and went 4-for-64 at the plate. That’s right, they hit .063 in the first two games of the series. It was the first time in 46 years they lost back-to-back games with zero runs scored.

South Carolina Baseball under Paul Mainieri is now 7-34 against power conference competition, 6-28 vs the SEC.

The worst this program has been in my lifetime… I was born in late 1976.

This despite…

-A top 10 baseball operating budget nationally.
-A top half in the SEC (at…

— JC Shurburtt (@jcshurburtt) March 15, 2026

Who won the weekend

Arkansas won their home opening series against top five ranked Mississippi State, and made a case to be the top team in the SEC.

Beating No. 3 Mississippi State was still only the third biggest win on the weekend for Arkansas athletics. In addition to the big win at Baum-Walker Stadium, they also won the SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament in Nashville, and Arkansas Men’s Track and Field won the Indoor National Championship this weekend, their 43rd national title in men’s track and field.

Congratulations to @RazorbackTF for winning the men’s team title at the 2026 @NCAATrackField Indoor Track & Field Championships in Fayetteville, Arkansas! pic.twitter.com/YN27SD2ZtJ

— USTFCCCA (@USTFCCCA) March 15, 2026

Most exciting series

One of three ranked match-ups in the SEC on opening weekend was in Athens, Georgia between two longtime rivals, Georgia and Tennessee. It had the feel of a Super Regional on Sunday.

The two teams split the first two games, and Tennessee took a commanding 5-0 lead in the third game. Georgia came into the weekend leading the nation in home runs, and it won on Sunday because of it.

Trailing 6-3 in the seventh inning, the Bulldogs loaded the bases. Their MVP, Dan Jackson, unloaded them with a single that scored two. Then Bryce Calloway came in to pinch hit and proceeded to put a 93 mph fastball into the trees in right center at Foley Field. He let everyone know about it, too.

Bryce Calloway for the lead! pic.twitter.com/UydZMap5Nm

— College Baseball Insiders (@Theinsiders) March 15, 2026

Georgia took an 8-6 lead after the home run as they went into the eighth inning. The Vols would make it a one run game in the ninth, and that’s when it was Georgia’s defense that sent the rain soaked Vols back to Knoxville with a series loss.

Left fielder Cole Johnson robbed Stone Lawless of a home run that would have tied it up as Lawless Gronk-spiked his bat into the turf.

OH MY GOD. GEORGIA ROBS THE GO AHEAD HR 🔥🔥🔥

Dawgs take the series from Tennessee pic.twitter.com/57Q1MThHvu

— 11Point7 College Baseball (@11point7) March 15, 2026