What has practice really been like this week?
Head coach Chad Holbrook didn’t mince words after South Carolina’s 4-1 loss to Texas A&M and early exit from the SEC Tournament: he wanted his players to hate the sight of him.
“We’ll probably have two-a-days three or four days in a row,” he said after the Gamecocks were eliminated. “I’m going to make them as sick of me as I possibly can and hopefully they’ll be excited to see another opponent.”
He wasn’t joking.
The Gamecocks (42-15) have been pedal-to-the-medal since arriving home from Hoover, doing just what Holbrook promised: two-a-days.
Since coming home, the team has practiced in the mornings and held scrimmages in the afternoons. And with less than a week before the postseason begins, Holbrook’s optimistic about his team’s attitude.
“We’ve done well. The practices have been fine,” he said. “We’ve gotten some good work in. Guys are bouncing around, in good spirits and we feel good about how they’ve worked and gone about their business. They didn’t leave Hoover discouraged. We still believed in ourselves.”
After coming off their third-straight winless trip to the tournament, practice was expected to be hard, and players welcomed it. They saw it as a chance to improve on their lackluster performance in Hoover.
“There have been a lot of high-intensity practices,” senior infielder DC Arendas said. “Nobody’s sick of coach, we’re just here to get our work in. As players, we have to play better. In Hoover, there were a lot of areas in the game where we didn’t play well. We expect the coaches to drill us this week.”
Even though the team is in high spirits doesn’t mean this week hasn’t been intense. Many players haven’t experienced a regional before and don’t know exactly what to expect come Friday at 7 p.m.
Because of that, they’re thankful for a week of high-intensity work.
“It’s been intense, and I think it should be,” sophomore outfielder Alex Destino said. “We’re disappointed with how we played in Hoover and said we’ll be seeing a lot of him and we sure have. It’s just getting us ready for this weekend and I can’t complain at all about that.”
South Carolina starts postseason play Friday against Rhode Island and a win puts the team in a good position to make it to a regional final come Sunday.
The team will practice Tuesday and Wednesday at least, likely with the same two-a-day schedule as the previous days. And hopefully it’ll come back to benefit the Gamecocks come regional time.
“We’ve really been getting after it,” sophomore pitcher Clarke Schmidt said. “Everyone’s accepting that and we knew we didn’t have the best showing in Hoover and we knew the best way to prepared for this week was to go as hard as we could. Those two-a-days are going to prepare ourselves for the weekend ahead. We’re ready to go.”
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