What Kevin Schnall said about being connected to South Carolina baseball job
Coastal Carolina baseball coach Kevin Schnall’s name continues to come up in connection with the South Carolina Gamecocks’ job opening.
Schnall was asked about that connection in a Tuesday-evening radio interview with SportsTalk’s Phil Kornblut. Coastal is headed to the NCAA Tournament this weekend and will face Northern Illinois in the Tallahassee Regional on Friday.
The Chanticleers’ second-year head coach said he hasn’t personally talked with anyone at USC. He did acknowledge that his agent has had contact with a search firm about the Gamecocks’ job but “has got very little information.”
“Listen, I know that there are a lot of rumors out there,” Schnall said in the radio interview. “But I haven’t spoken to the University of South Carolina regarding its baseball head coaching position. All of our focus right now is 100 percent on Coastal.
“South Carolina is an elite program. It is a job that a lot of coaches will be interested in because of the commitment and tradition.”
Later in the interview, Schnall said he could see himself retiring at Coastal and detailed how special the school has been to him. He’s been a Chanticleer lifer, playing there in college and working as assistant coach for 21 years.
Schnall led Coastal to the College World Series championship series last year and has been a hot name in college baseball coaching. He interviewed for the Tennessee job last year when Tony Vitello took the San Francisco Giants job.
“I am the head baseball coach at Coastal Carolina,” Schnall told Kornblut on Tuesday. “In the last two and half decades, we’ve got the fifth-best winning percentage, the sixth most wins in the entire country. In the last decade, we’ve got the most wins in South Carolina. We have been to Omaha twice, we won a national championship. Last year, we were in the national championship finals. It is going to happen every single year. I am very fortunate to be a part of this successful program. Coach (Gary) Gilmore laid this foundation and we continue to build on the foundation.
“At the end of the day, success is why people are interested. It is going to happen every single year if we continue to be successful.”
On April 29, USC athletic director Jeremiah Donati said the school was still in the assessment phase for its next coach. The school has hired a search firm to find its replacement for Paul Mainieri. The Gamecocks have missed the postseason the last two years and are coming off a 35-loss season, the worst in program history.
“Now is the time that we’ve really got to take a good look at the program overall and figure out what it is that we need,” Donati said April 29 at the first stop of the Garnet and Black Road Trip, “and figure out the profile for who the next coach is going to be. “We’ve had a tremendous amount of outreach from current coaches all over the country,” Donati said. “Some big names. This is the job right now.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2026 at 7:30 PM with the headline "What Kevin Schnall said about being connected to South Carolina baseball job."
