Why USC baseball headed to the football facility after NCAA Tournament announcement

South Carolina’s baseball team had just wrapped up a watch party for the NCAA Tournament Selection Show on Monday.

Shortly after, they headed not to their own field, but to the football team’s Jerri and Steve Spurrier Indoor Practice Facility.

“We’ll get back to work today,” Gamecocks coach Mark King. “The weather’s not going to allow us to get on the field, so we’ll sneak over to the football complex and get some work done in there.”

Taking infield work on a turf field? Not the usual way to start prep for this weekend’s regional at East Carolina.

“We’ll go over there, throw, take some ground balls, run some sprints,” Kingston said. “Just move around a little bit since we can’t get on our field.

“The good thing about indoor batting cages is you can get just as many swings indoors as outdoors.”

Rain had hit the Midlands for much of early Monday, and the forecast called for more.

Kingston said the chance to take a few days off came at a good time for his squad. They’d wrapped SEC tournament play with a loss to LSU the previous Thursday, and won’t have to play until Friday at 2 p.m. against Ohio State

USC will practice at home Tuesday, travel Wednesday and practice in Greenville, N.C., on Thursday.

“There’s no team in America that needed a little time off more than us because of two games in a row 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. The last couple days have been just about recharging the batteries for the entire team.”

The biggest injury has been T.J. Hopkins who has missed extensive time with a strained back and was hitting .345. Reserve pitcher Ridge Chapman is also day-to-day, while multiple players, such as Hunter Taylor and Justin Row, have been nursing injuries and playing through.

As they start getting back at it, they’ll do it with a roof over their heads. It’ll be something that’s mostly new, as the program returns to an old and familiar place in the postseason picture.

“We’ve done some running there,” Jonah Bride said. “We’re gonna hit in the cages at our field, and then I think, we’ll probably take infield and we’ll be able to do some things in there. That’s something we haven’t done.”

This story was originally published May 28, 2018 at 2:32 PM with the headline "Why USC baseball headed to the football facility after NCAA Tournament announcement."