Gamecocks one and done in Hoover, clinch first losing season since 1996
The final play was the perfect exemplification of South Carolina’s season. Bizarre. Unlucky. Close, but not close enough.
Faced with elimination on the first day of the SEC baseball tournament, the Gamecocks battled against Florida for 10 innings Tuesday, showing come-from-behind grit to tie the score in the ninth — but that would only worsen the heartbreak. An inning later, the Gators walked off on a razor-close play at the plate. Florida’s Colby Halter hit a fly ball to center field, and USC outfielder Evan Stone unleashed a rocket to home plate.
The throw beat the runner rounding third. But catcher Talmadge LeCroy couldn’t hold onto the ball, the umpire signaled safe, and the Gators sprinted out of their dugout in a moment of pure exuberance. The No. 7 seed Gators beat the No. 10 seed Gamecocks 2-1, ending USC’s season.
“At the end, it was a bang-bang play,” head coach Mark Kingston said, holding back emotions throughout the postgame press conference. “The ball clearly beat the runner, but we just dropped the ball. And sometimes that happens.
“That’s a great summary of life: Sometimes you just drop the ball.”
Nothing came easily Tuesday in Hoover, with thunderstorms stalling Game 1 and pushing USC’s game back nearly six hours. Coming into the tournament with a .500 record and an RPI hovering around 70, the Gamecocks needed to win the SEC tournament title outright to earn an NCAA regional berth. Instead, the Gamecocks clinched their first losing season (27-28, 13-17 SEC) since 1996 — the year before current athletic director Ray Tanner took over as head coach.
USC right-hander Will Sanders delivered an exceptional outing on the mound for the Gamecocks, allowing just one run — unearned — through seven innings, striking out 10, walking three and allowing four hits.
But Florida right-hander Brandon Sproat was even more dominant. Touching as high as 98 miles per hour on the stadium radar gun, Sproat didn’t allow a Gamecocks hit until Josiah Sightler singled with one out in the top of the seventh. At one point, Sproat retired 13 straight USC hitters, and he kept the Gamecocks off balance all night by mixing in a power breaking ball. The Gamecocks could only muster one run — on an RBI groundout by Andrew Eyster — on four hits.
Still, the Gamecocks had every opportunity to win after tying the game in the ninth, and they were bit by an unlucky bounce on a ground ball by Florida’s Ty Evans in the 10th. On what would’ve been a routine grounder to third base, the ball deflected off of the bag and bounced over third baseman Jalen Vasquez’ head for a double. Evans would later come around to score the winning run on the sacrifice fly.
“One ground ball that takes a weird bounce off a bag — it kind of was the epitome of our season,” Sanders said. “Just looking for ways for us to take advantage and come up short is really heartbreaking because we’ve been through so much adversity and so much struggle and injuries with everybody out. We just tried to find ways to win games. And it’s hard.”
The loss capped a frustrating season for the Gamecocks, one that was defined by injuries and inconsistency. Injuries on the pitching staff were especially crippling. Weekend starters Julian Bosnic and James Hicks were both lost for the year early in the season due to elbow injuries, and the Gamecocks also lost a significant bullpen piece in right-hander Wesley Sweatt, among other arms.
But USC had its fair share of offensive struggles throughout the season, too, ranking last in the SEC in team batting average (.266), slugging percentage (.413) and second-to-last in runs scored (313). Part of those struggles were due to a young lineup that at times started four freshmen.
South Carolina had its moments of prowess — early-season series wins over Vanderbilt and Texas are clear standouts — but USC also dropped midweek games to the likes of The Citadel, Presbyterian and USC Upstate.
The Gamecocks have now missed NCAA regional play twice in head coach Mark Kingston’s five years of the helm, not including a 2020 season that was shortened due to COVID-19. The Gamecocks made a super regional in Kingston’s first year in 2018, then went 28-28 and missed the playoffs in Year 2.
Last season, the Gamecocks hosted an NCAA regional as a No. 2 seed but were unable to advance to the regional finals. Under Kingston, the Gamecocks are 1-5 in the SEC tournament.
Emotions were raw in the South Carolina dugout and locker room after the game, with Kingston expressing how proud he was of the way his players fought through their injury woes and adversity. Eyster, the fifth-year senior, especially struggled to hold back tears as he described how much this USC team meant to him.
“I kind of feel like we were just kind of a bunch of average Joe’s, honestly,” Eyster said. “The best way I can describe it is, it’s a bunch of grinders, a bunch of guys that just want to play baseball and really come together.
“We clearly never gave up and kept fighting until the end. It wasn’t the outcome we had hoped for, but that’s how it goes sometimes. I’m gonna miss this group of guys.”
This story was originally published May 24, 2022 at 10:27 PM.
