After consecutive SEC series losses, where does South Carolina baseball stand?
The South Carolina baseball team was bound to hit a rough patch eventually. No Southeastern Conference team makes it through league play unscathed, and the Gamecocks have one of the most rigorous schedules in the country.
On Saturday night, No. 19 Ole Miss put the finishing touches on a three-game sweep of the visiting No. 13 Gamecocks, beating them 6-4 in the nightcap of a doubleheader. The sweep marked the second straight SEC series loss for the Gamecocks (26-15, 11-10) after the team opened conference play 10-5. The weekend prior, South Carolina dropped two of three games at home to No. 1 Arkansas.
With just three SEC series left in the regular season, the Gamecocks are trending in the wrong direction at a critical juncture. This is the time of year when NCAA tournament resumes are either solidified or picked apart.
Heading into the weekend at Ole Miss, both D1Baseball and Baseball America projected the Gamecocks as one of 16 regional hosts for next month’s tournament. The sweep likely knocks them out of that group, without much time to make up ground. D1Baseball’s Kendall Rogers reported the NCAA intends to announce 20 potential hosting sites the week of May 10, before narrowing down to 16 sites by Selection Monday.
Can the Gamecocks regroup?
Head coach Mark Kingston said after Saturday’s doubleheader sweep that his greatest concern is with the team’s bats, which have cooled the last two weekends.
“That’s the biggest thing,” Kingston said. “We generally pitch well enough to win every game. Generally our defense is good enough. It’s all about that offense. We have good days offensively, we win. When we struggle (offensively), we lose close, low-scoring games. And so just collectively we have to continue to get better. We have to try to help these guys figure out what adjustments need to be made. We figure that out, we’ll be fine.”
Early in the season, the USC offense appeared unstoppable, riding the late-inning heroics of Andrew Eyster and the power of junior Wes Clarke.
But after jumping out to the national lead with his 15th home run on April 3, Clarke went the rest of April without homering. He hit his 16th homer Saturday night — a three-run shot off the scoreboard — perhaps a sign of better things to come. He started the game batting seventh in the lineup, dropping from the top half of the order after consecutive hitless games
It’s not all about Clarke. As a team, the USC offense has declined since the start of the season. In a 14-team conference, the Gamecocks rank 13th in runs scored, 13th in batting average (.257) and 12th in on-base percentage (.356). Only three SEC teams have struck out more than the Gamecocks, and USC struck out 17 times in Friday’s opener.
Facing the likes of No. 1 Arkansas and Ole Miss with their power arms did the USC offense no favors — but the schedule isn’t getting easier. Up next, the Gamecocks will host a No. 6 Mississippi State team that just swept Texas A&M. And then after a weekend series at Kentucky, USC will host an even hotter No. 4 Tennessee team.
Those series could make or break South Carolina’s hosting resume. As it stands now, the Gamecocks do have several metrics on their side. They rank ninth in the country in strength of schedule, according to WarrenNolan.com, and USC ranked 10th in the NCAA’s most recent RPI rankings. A sweep of Florida as well as series wins on the road at Georgia and LSU should catch the selection committee’s eye.
But that resume is not yet complete, and the Gamecocks can’t afford to allow the struggles of the previous two weekends to snowball. There’s precedent for a bounce-back: Early in the season, USC was swept at Texas before losing two of three at Vanderbilt. The very next weekend, USC swept then-No. 5 Florida and won the next three SEC series.
The Gamecocks will hope for a repeat performance as they return to Columbia.
“It was a tough weekend for us, no question about it,” Kingston said. “We played a really good Ole Miss team, had their backs against the wall and then they played probably their best weekend of the year and just played better than us, bottom line ... so we gotta lick our wounds, get back to work, get back to Columbia and prepare for the next game.”
NEXT USC BASEBALL GAME
Who: No. 13 South Carolina vs. North Florida
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Founders Park
Watch: Streaming on SEC Network Plus
This story was originally published May 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
