Weather could scuttle USC-Clemson baseball Sunday. Rescheduling might be an issue
South Carolina and Clemson are set to renew their baseball rivalry this weekend.
They just need Mother Nature to cooperate.
While the forecast for Friday’s game in Clemson and Saturday’s contest in Greenville seems fine, at least as of Thursday, the Sunday game at Founders Park is trickier.
According to the National Weather Service, there’s a 90 percent chance of showers in Columbia on Sunday, mainly after 11 a.m.
So far this year, USC has managed to dodge any weather delays despite some threatening forecasts. Sunday, however, may be the worst yet, and Carolina already announced earlier this week that it was moving the start time up to noon.
Pushing the game to Monday is a nonstarter for South Carolina coach Mark Kingston — his team has two midweek games coming up and he doesn’t want to overload their schedule.
“It’s hard to say we’re going to play Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday,” Kingston said. “Just logistically, I don’t think that’s something you can pull off. We’ll evaluate if there’s anywhere in the future we could make up the third game, but for the time being, I think we’re all just going to hope for the best.”
Kingston also gave no indication that the Gamecocks would be willing to play a doubleheader on Saturday in Greenville, which would take away USC’s home game in the series. He did say there had been some discussion of moving the time for Friday’s game, though nothing came of it.
Moving Sunday’s start time any more than it already has been won’t happen either, Kingston said.
“We’ve already moved it up to noon. Don’t think we can move it up anymore, and at this point, we just need to hope Mother Nature agrees with us and allows us to play a baseball game,” Kingston said.
The weather could force Kingston into making some strategic moves — South Carolina’s Sunday starting pitcher, Reid Morgan, has been far and away the team’s best option on the weekend rotation, and if Sunday’s game is off the table, he may be deployed in a different role, Kingston said.
“Yeah it could, everything’s always on the table. Like the football analogy, you get to the line of scrimmage, you evaluate the defense and you see what the best play is,” Kingston said.
This story was originally published February 28, 2019 at 2:24 PM.
