COLUMBIA, S.C. — After another disappointing season, the South Carolina Gamecocks baseball program heads in a new direction and is set to hire Kevin Schnall as their new head coach. Schnall has spent a quarter of a century with Coastal Carolina, including the last two years as head coach.
He had a 93-36 overall record over the past two seasons and finished 2025 as the national runner-ups after one of the best postseason runs in program history. This season, the Chanticleers fell in the Tallahassee Regional but still had a solid year with a 37-23 overall record and 21-9 record in the Sun Belt Conference, which was second best in the conference. The Chanticleers had two players named as preseason All-Americans and were one of five teams in the Sun Belt to receive a NCAA postseason bid.
As for the Gamecocks, it has been a long fall from glory for their program. South Carolina parted ways with Paul Mainieri in the middle of the season this year after he had a disappointing 40-40 overall record since taking over as head coach in 2024. They have missed the NCAA Tournament each of the last two seasons and hasn’t made an appearance in the College World Series since 2012. Despite that, the Gamecocks are still one of of the premiere programs in the country and in the SEC. From 2000-2004, they won more games than any other Division I program in the country and had a 12-year stretch where they had five seasons with 50 or more wins in a season(2000, 2002, 2004, 2010 & 2011).
Schnall will have his work cut out for him as 20 players have already entered the NCAA Transfer Portal, but the ole ball coach is used to building a program from the ground. Schnall was a key part of the recruiting process for Coastal Carolina for the last two decades and a half despite briefly leaving the program to serve as an assistant for UCF from 2013-2015 before returning back to the Chanticleers program in 2016.
Coastal Carolina has made an appearance in the NCAA Tournament in five of the last seven seasons. Schnall was on staff when the program made their only two College World Series appearances in school history, 2016 and 2025, with them winning it all in 2016.
South Carolina’s board of trustees signed off on the hire to make it official, and athletic director Jeremiah Donati has insisted that Schnall was at the top of his short list of coaches that they seriously considered. Schnall will be the 33rd head coach in program history and will be at his official welcome event at Founders Park on June 12 at 8:30 p.m.