Chris Cullen launches two more bombs as South Carolina sweeps Utah Valley
Slow start? What slow start?
South Carolina baseball’s Chris Cullen opened the season as a starter, and then didn’t get to the plate the next two games. He had one hit in his first 10 at-bats.
Then on Sunday, he belted his second and third home runs in two days and helped power the Gamecocks to an 10-3 win against Utah Valley to complete the series sweep. USC turned a windy Founders Park into a bit of launching pad, as Noah Campbell, Brady Allen and Andrew Eyster all went yard in the later innings.
“It gets you jacked up a little bit,” Cullen said. “But you can’t really look into it too much. We’ve got to stick with our offensive approaches.
“If we stay within ourselves and try to hit the ball low and hard up the middle, that’s when you kind of find successful runs.”
South Carolina (6-1) ran its winning streak to six games.
The Gamecocks got the scoring going early with Cullen’s first home run, plating Jacob Olson after a leadoff double in the second. USC added a couple more an inning later with Allen’s two-run single.
After the Wolverines (1-5) got a run back on a groundout, Cullen came up with two on in the fifth and launched his second shot deep to straightaway center.
The senior finished 2-of-3 with five RBIs and the two home runs. He’d dropped weight to start the season and projected to play catcher, but has been at first of late. He came into the season with only nine career home runs.
He said the team wasn’t aiming to hit home runs, especially on an afternoon when the wind was blowing hard, either out to center or toward right field.
“It was great,” Gamecocks coach Mark Kingston said of getting some big days from the bottom of the lineup. “Obviously you want to have a lineup that has good length. One through nine, you want to be productive, and those guys hitting at the bottom today, Allen with two hits, Cullen with two hits Eyster with three.”
The trio went 7-for-10 with four home runs and eight RBIs from the six, seven and eight spots in the lineup.
Perhaps the most interesting moment in the early innings was a call that went mostly unexplained. Noah Campbell stole second with two outs, and then was awarded third for a reason the umps didn’t make clear. Then, after replay, he was called out, leaving Kingston visibly flummoxed on the field.
In his second start for South Carolina, pitcher Reid Morgan turned a stronger performance than his already solid first. He stuck out nine, going eight innings in fewer than 100 pitches while getting charged with one run (two were unearned). He’d allowed only one run in six innings in his first start.
It was the longest outing for a Gamecocks pitcher since Wil Crowe against Mississippi State in 2017.
Kingston was asked about any possible shuffles in the rotation, as Morgan had two strong starts while No. 2 arm Dylan Hurley was inconsistent in two Saturdays, but the coach said any discussion would come early in the week. He also called Reid a calming influence, despite a bit of a wild look.
“I’m a strike thrower,” Morgan said, admitting he was shocked he went 14 innings in his first two starts. “I’ve always been told, you pound the zone, get people out.
“There was a couple errors made behind me. I just was like, ‘OK, whatever, lets go to the next guy.’ ”
NEXT
Who: South Carolina (6-1) vs. Appalachian State (1-3)
When: 4 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 23
Where: Founders Park
Listen: 107.5 FM in Columbia, South Carolina
This story was originally published February 24, 2019 at 4:26 PM.
