Over and out: Virginia eliminates South Carolina from NCAA tournament
As the rain poured down at Founders Park on Sunday afternoon, Cam Tringali and Parker Coyne sat along the home dugout fence.
For nearly 20 minutes following South Carolina’s season-ending 3-2 loss to Virginia, the three USC pitchers let the rain coat them. Puddles formed before them on the infield dirt, while tears slipped from their eyes.
Tringali and Coyne were both on the South Carolina roster when the Gamecocks last reached a super regional in 2018. On Sunday, their 2021 season ended as storm clouds enveloped the skies above Columbia.
“Last year was taken away,” a clearly emotional USC head coach Mark Kingston said. “This year they went through more than any baseball team has ever been through for a variety of reasons, and they battled their asses off all year.”
South Carolina didn’t advance to the finals of a regional they hosted for the first time since the NCAA went to the regional-super regional structure in 1999. Instead, Virginia moved on to face top-seeded Old Dominion in the finals Sunday evening.
One day after Thomas Farr gutted through an electric 7.2 innings, South Carolina’s Brannon Jordan labored throughout his 2.2 innings Sunday against the Cavaliers. Jordan was consistently teed up. Even the pop flies he induced carried to the warning track.
A quintet of strikeouts helped Jordan’s final line, but his erraticism and a trio of extra base hits ended his afternoon early.
Devin Ortiz notched the first Cavalier break off Jordan, shooting a single through the left side of the infield to plate the first run of the day. Alex Tappen doubled the UVa lead with a towering solo homer that landed just below the Founders Park scoreboard the following frame.
Nic Kent added the third Virginia run in as many innings and sent Jordan packing when he smacked a double into left-center field to score Kyle Teel.
The Gamecocks continued their wayward ways the plate as UVa starter Matt Wyatt diced his way through the South Carolina lineup. Wyatt, who’d started just once in 17 appearances this spring, struck out eight batters in five innings while allowing just a pair of hits.
South Carolina finished 4 of 17 on advancement opportunities Sunday. A 13-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio didn’t help the cause.
The Gamecocks earned an early offensive blip when a chopper from Wes Clarke scored Brady Allen from third following a ripped single by Andrew Eyster — who entered the afternoon 0 for 9 in regional play but finished the day 2 for 4.
After a solo homer by Brennan Milone, first baseman Joe Satterfield smoked a liner back at Cavalier reliever Zach Messinger. There, Messinger corralled the hot shot and flipped it over to third base before a turn to second doubled off Colin Burgess and Braylen Wimmer to end the threat.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before on a baseball field,” Milone said. “He cracked it up the middle. Nine times out of 10 that gets up the middle and that’s a run-scoring single.”
Allen earned another chance at tying the ballgame in the seventh inning, but he struck out on three consecutive offerings from Virginia closer Stephen Schoch.
Riding his bewildering slider that routinely painted the outside corner of the plate, Virginia’s hulking closer downed seven of the eight batters he faced — including five via strikeout — to slam the door in South Carolina’s 2021 campaign.
With mid-afternoon storms submerging the field at Founders Park, Tringali and Coyne leapt off the top step of the dugout and slid on their chests toward the middle of the tarp coating the infield.
In the moments of crushing defeat, the exuberance and light-heartedness that characterized the Gamecocks throughout the year shone through as agonizing heartache set in.
“It’s super emotional obviously — the end of every season is like that,” Eyster said. “But also knowing that a lot of guys probably aren’t going to be here next year, that’s emotional too.”
This story was originally published June 6, 2021 at 3:17 PM.
