Mark Kingston Talks Challenge Of Facing Georgia Superstar Charlie Condon

Andrew Lyon | May 9, 2024

Georgia's first baseman Charlie Condon (24) with a home run on the Florida Gators (April 14th, 2023) / Cyndi Chambers / USA TODAY NETWORK

When SEC baseball gets discussed, the depth of the league is typically brought up, and for good reason, with 12 teams currently projected in the Field of 64 by D1Baseball.com, and seven are projected as Top 16 overall seeds. It's also the individual star power that makes the conference so fun to watch, and South Carolina fans understand this to a substantial degree getting to see a superstar on their team in Ethan Petry, but the Gamecocks will be facing a different beast this weekend in Georgia's Charlie Condon.

Condon and Petry battled head-to-head as freshmen in 2023, with the Bulldog star hitting just two more home runs (25 total) and having a batting average just .010 percentage points higher (.386) than the Florida native. This year, Georgia's third baseman has somehow raised the bar even higher, slashing an astonishing .415/.526/1.043 in 94 at-bats against SEC opposition, hitting 17 homeruns and batting in 35 runs in the process. When asked at his Wednesday press conference how you pitch to a batter of Charlie's caliber, South Carolina's head coach Mark Kingston started with a joke, then later gave a more blunt, in-depth response.

"You throw the ball to the backstop and make sure he doesn't steal second base," Mark said humorously. "I think when you hit .459 with 33 homers, [have] a 1.100 slugging [percentage] and an almost .600 on-base percentage, yeah, I don't think there's really any way to get him out. There's just not. So you've got to try to minimize his damage; You've got to try to do the best you can of limiting his impact on a game, and that's really all you can do. When a guy has those kinds of stats, because those are the kind of stats that would make Barry Bonds blush, it's incredible."

The South Carolina Gamecocks will begin their three-game series against Condon and the No. 15 Georgia Bulldogs later tonight in Founders Park.

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