3 takeaways from USC landing in ECU regional for NCAA Tournament

South Carolina baseball is going dancing in Greenville, N.C., it learned Monday, as the NCAA Tournament selection committee named the Gamecocks a No. 2 seed in East Carolina's regional.

Coach Mark Kingston's squad will begin its campaign for Omaha and the College World Series on Friday, when USC faces No. 3 seed Ohio State. The winner of that game will face the winner of East Carolina and No. 4 seed UNC-Wilmington. The eventual winner of the regional will face the victor of the Arkansas regional.

Here are three main takeaways from the Gamecocks' draw and what they can expect in Greenville:

Favorable and familiar host

D1Baseball.com and Baseball America projected South Carolina to go to Coastal Carolina and UNC, respectively. With all due respect to ECU, South Carolina is likely very happy it avoided those spots, as well as a potential trip to No. 10 overall seed Clemson.

The Pirates have a strong resume — 43 wins, an RPI of 12 and a team ERA of just 3.28 — but the Gamecocks have been completely dominated by the Tar Heels over the past few years, and Coastal is just two seasons removed from a national championship and hits .290 with a staff ERA below 4.

East Carolina, meanwhile, is a team with whom Kingston is very familiar — his former team South Florida played ECU in the American Athletic Conference. What's more, in three years with USF, Kingston went 9-2 against the Pirates, including a 2-1 record in Greenville.

Big Ten-SEC challenge

It's been a long time since Ohio State and South Carolina last met — it was in 1988 in Columbia. So it's not surprising that Kingston and his players said immediately after the matchup was announced that they don't know much at all about the Buckeyes.

But the stats show that USC got a pretty favorable opening matchup. OSU hits well, with a .287 team batting average, but it does not hit for power, with just a .411 slugging percentage and 168 extra base hits, compared to .446 and 185 for Carolina. The Buckeyes also don't run very much, and their fielding percentage is 267th in the country.

On the mound, Ohio State has a team ERA of 4.58, which ranks 129th in the NCAA. The team does have a strong ace in junior left-hander Connor Curlis, who has a 7-4 record with a 3.81 ERA, though he also has a WHIP of 1.35 and a batting average against of .270.

On the season, USC generally has had more success against left-handed starters, with a 12-6 record in such games, compared to 21-18 against righties.

Early SEC exit may help

South Carolina bowed out of the SEC tournament on Thursday after going 1-2 in Hoover, Ala. And while fans and players obviously would have wanted the team to play into the weekend, the early break gave the Gamecocks a desperately needed extra few days to rest and recover.

"Probably there's no team in America that needed a little time off than us, because of our injuries, because of playing two games until 2:30 in the morning and then having to play a day game the next day. So I think it will be very good for us," Kingston said. "The last couple days were just about recharging the batteries for the entire team."

USC's performance in the tourney clearly didn't do anything to hurt its seed, and the Gamecocks' chances of hosting a regional were slim, at best, no matter how well they played. Now that Kingston's squad has rested and received a fairly favorable draw, that SEC exit could be seen as a net positive.

This story was originally published May 28, 2018 at 3:50 PM with the headline "3 takeaways from USC landing in ECU regional for NCAA Tournament."