Kevin Schnall has agreed to become the 33rd head baseball coach at the University of South Carolina, leaving Coastal Carolina after a 27-year run in Conway that ran from his playing days through two seasons as the Chanticleers’ head coach. This important transition in college baseball comes as USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall to turn their dismal program around. The move was first reported Tuesday morning by Gamecock247’s John Whittle and D1Baseball’s Kendall Rogers, and quickly confirmed by The State and the Post and Courier, both citing USC athletic department sources.
The hire is not yet final. The USC Board of Trustees is scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. Wednesday, June 11, with Schnall’s contract expected to be on the agenda for approval. USC Athletics had not issued a formal release as of Tuesday afternoon, and no press conference has been scheduled. Athletic Director Jeremiah Donati, who ran the search, has not made a public statement on the hire. Neither has USC President Michael Amiridis or Coastal Carolina Athletic Director Chance Miller.
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall: A New Chapter for the Program
The news of USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall is being met with anticipation as fans and players alike look forward to the new era in Gamecock baseball.
For Horry County, the news lands differently than it does in Columbia. The coach widely identified with Coastal Carolina baseball — a player, a longtime assistant, and most recently the head coach who took the Chanticleers to the College World Series Finals in 2025 — is leaving for the in-state Southeastern Conference rival roughly 140 miles up the road.
Who Kevin Schnall is
Schnall arrived at Coastal Carolina as a catcher in 1995 and finished his playing career as the Big South Player of the Year in 1999, according to reporting compiled by the Post and Courier and Baseball America. He returned to Conway as an assistant coach in 2001 under Gary Gilmore and stayed on staff through the 2012 season. After three seasons as an assistant at Central Florida, he came back to Coastal in 2016 as associate head coach and pitching coach.
That return season produced the defining moment in Horry County college athletics history. The 2016 Chanticleers won the College World Series under Gilmore, with Schnall on the staff. The national title belongs to Gilmore as head coach, but Schnall’s fingerprints are on the pitching staff that delivered it.
He stayed in that role for eight more seasons. When Gilmore retired after the 2024 season, Schnall was promoted to head coach for the 2025 campaign. In his first year in the chair, Coastal Carolina went 56-13, won the Sun Belt regular-season and tournament titles, and reached the College World Series Finals before losing to LSU. His two-year head-coaching record at Coastal is 93-36 overall and 47-13 in Sun Belt play.
He has never head-coached at the SEC level. His only head-coaching experience is the past two seasons at Coastal Carolina.
How South Carolina got here
USC has not been in this position by choice. The school hired Paul Mainieri out of retirement in the summer of 2024 under then-Athletic Director Ray Tanner, betting that the former LSU coach could rebuild the Gamecocks. The bet did not pay off.
Mainieri was let go on Saturday, March 21, 23 games into the 2026 season. USC was 12-11 overall and 0-4 in SEC play at the time, coming off a 22-6 loss to Arkansas the previous day and a six-game losing streak. Mainieri, who was 68, framed the departure as stepping aside on his own timeline. My goal had not materialized as quickly as I would have liked and would take more time than I had anticipated — that is time that I just don’t have at my age,” he said in a statement reported by Whole Hog Sports. He finished his USC tenure 40-40 overall and 6-28 in SEC play, according to Baseball America.
Monte Lee took over as interim head coach. The Gamecocks did not recover. South Carolina ended the year at 22-35 overall and 7-23 in SEC play, losing its final 13 games and missing the NCAA Tournament for a second straight year. The program has not been to the College World Series since 2012.
Donati, hired in December 2024 to replace Tanner, ran the coaching search himself. He told The State earlier in the spring that he was interviewing candidates but counseled patience, noting that several top targets were still coaching in the NCAA Tournament. According to Yahoo Sports and The State, the search came down to Schnall and West Virginia head coach Steve Sabins.
What it costs and what’s next
The Post and Courier and The State report that Coastal Carolina is owed a $600,000 buyout under Schnall’s contract, triggered because the move was completed before June 30. WMBF News reported the buyout schedule from his Coastal deal in November 2025, when the structure was first made public. Schnall’s 2026 base salary at Coastal was $500,000 plus incentives, according to prior Post and Courier reporting.
USC has not publicly disclosed Schnall’s salary or contract length. Industry expectation, per multiple outlets including 247Sports and Yahoo Sports, is that the package will top the roughly $1.3 million Mainieri was earning in 2026. No official figure is confirmed.
Wednesday’s 4 p.m. Board of Trustees meeting is the procedural hurdle. After that, a USC press conference is expected later in the week, though no time has been set.
Schnall is also expected to bring most of his Coastal coaching staff with him to Columbia. The most consequential name on that list is pitching coach Matt Williams, who was at USC under former coach Mark Kingston in 2024, was not retained when Mainieri arrived, followed Schnall to Coastal, and was named the 2025 National Assistant Coach of the Year for his work on the College World Series Finals pitching staff. Williams’ move has not been formally announced but is widely reported as the most likely staff transition.
What this means for Conway
Coastal Carolina’s 2026 season ended on Sunday, May 31, in the Tallahassee Regional. The Chanticleers lost their opener to Northern Illinois and were eliminated by Florida State 2-1 in a weather-suspended elimination game that finished Sunday morning. They returned to Conway on June 1 at 37-23 overall and 21-9 in Sun Belt play, second in the conference standings. By Tuesday, Schnall’s name was already attached to the USC vacancy in national reporting.
The program now faces a head-coaching search of its own. Chance Miller, the Coastal athletic director who signed Schnall to a contract extension less than two years ago, has not named an interim head coach or commented publicly on the departure as of Tuesday afternoon. The fate of the 2026 recruiting class has not been reported.
The transfer portal opened June 1. Coastal is entering its rebuild at the same moment USC is entering its own — South Carolina has roughly 20 players in the portal and, by some accounts, only 16 to 18 players currently committed for the 2027 season.
Local fans are losing a coach who has been on the Coastal Carolina program in one form or another for nearly three decades. The 2016 national title staff, the 2025 trip to Omaha, two NCAA Regional appearances under his name as head coach — all of it built in Conway, mostly at Springs Brooks Stadium. Coastal Carolina baseball under Schnall was one of the most successful Division I programs in the state. Now the program’s hometown anchor is leaving for the SEC school 140 miles away.
The bigger context
USC has now turned over its head baseball coach twice in 18 months. Donati’s hire of Schnall, assuming Wednesday’s board vote goes through, resolves a turbulent stretch that included one mid-season departure and back-to-back losing seasons. The pressure to win at South Carolina, where the program’s two national championships in 2010 and 2011 still set the institutional expectation, is structurally higher than anything Schnall has dealt with at Coastal.
The SEC is the deepest baseball conference in the country, with budgets, facilities, and roster spending that the Sun Belt cannot match. Mainieri’s 6-28 SEC record is the recent example of how hard the league is to compete in even with experienced coaching. Schnall arrives with a strong recent track record, a likely staff transition that includes a national assistant coach of the year, and no head-coaching experience above the Sun Belt level.
The hire is a step up in stakes for Schnall and a step up in pressure. It is also, for Conway, a familiar story told from the other side. Local programs build coaches; bigger programs sign the checks. Coastal Carolina built Schnall over 27 years. Columbia is expected to pay him north of what Mainieri was earning — roughly $1.3 million — to leave.
Wednesday’s board meeting is the formal vote. The press conference and the salary numbers come after. For Conway, the next question is who succeeds Schnall at Coastal Carolina and how much of the roster and recruiting class stays in place. For Columbia, the question is what Schnall builds in the SEC without Gary Gilmore beside him.
## Further Reading
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall- [Reports: CCU baseball coach Kevin Schnall has accepted South Carolina job — MyHorryNews](https://www.myhorrynews.com/sports/college/reports-ccu-baseball-coach-kevin-schnall-has-accepted-south-carolina-job/article_d21f7350-b846-4cf2-aac2-d0fd9a49709f.html)
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall – [It’s Schnall, folks! Gamecocks tap Coastal Carolina head man to revive battered baseball program — Post and Courier](https://www.postandcourier.com/sports/carolina/gamecocks-baseball-coach-new-kevin-schnall/article_0ac896bc-8488-4c55-a43f-e5f4ad5d8ad1.html)
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall – [Sources confirm Kevin Schnall as South Carolina’s head baseball coach — WIS-TV](https://www.wistv.com/2026/06/09/sources-kevin-schnall-confirmed-south-carolinas-head-baseball-coach/)
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall – [South Carolina hires Coastal Carolina’s Kevin Schnall as next head coach — On3](https://www.on3.com/college/south-carolina-gamecocks/news/south-carolina-hires-coastal-carolina-kevin-schnall-as-next-head-coach/)
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall – [Kevin Schnall Expected To Be Hired As South Carolina Baseball Head Coach — Baseball America](https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/kevin-schnall-expected-to-be-hired-as-south-carolina-baseball-head-coach/)
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall – [What we’re hearing about Kevin Schnall, South Carolina baseball coaching search — Yahoo Sports](https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/hearing-kevin-schnall-south-carolina-201313525.html)
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall – [South Carolina coach Paul Mainieri resigns in middle of series with Arkansas — Whole Hog Sports](https://www.wholehogsports.com/news/2026/mar/21/south-carolina-coach-paul-mainieri-resigns-in-middle-of-series-with-arkansas-baseball/)
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall – [After Firing Paul Mainieri, What’s Next For South Carolina Baseball? — Baseball America](https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/after-firing-paul-mainieri-whats-next-for-south-carolina-baseball/)
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall – [Coastal Carolina baseball season comes to abrupt end with 0-2 regional performance — MyHorryNews](https://www.myhorrynews.com/sports/coastal-carolina-baseball-season-comes-to-abrupt-end-with-0-2-regional-performance/article_0112da5e-a0fd-41ba-bcb2-66d61ba040af.html)
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall – [Baseball Season Ends With Weather-Marred Loss To Florida State — Coastal Carolina University Athletics](https://goccusports.com/news/2026/5/31/baseball-season-ends-with-weather-marred-loss-to-florida-state.aspx)
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall – [Details from Coastal Carolina baseball head coach’s contract revealed — WMBF News](https://www.wmbfnews.com/2025/11/11/details-coastal-carolina-baseballs-head-coach-contract-revealed/)
USC Baseball Hires Kevin Schnall – [Contracts finalized for CCU’s Kevin Schnall, Chance Miller — Post and Courier](https://www.postandcourier.com/myrtle-beach/sports/contracts-finalized-new-coastal-carolina-baseball-coach-kevin-schnall-ad-chance-miller/article_46428c10-6557-11ef-b673-b3f745cf4409.html)
