Wild finish: South Carolina baseball stuns No. 1 LSU in series opener
In a game that won’t mean much for South Carolina’s slim postseason chances, the Gamecocks showed the fight of a prideful champion Thursday night against No. 1 LSU.
Pinch-runner Dalton Mashore scored on a wild pitch with two outs in the ninth inning to give South Carolina an improbable 6-5 walk-off win over the Tigers and give the small-but-spirited Founders Park crowd something to cheer about in a season that’s featured plenty of disappointment.
“Any time you beat the No. 1 team in the country, it’s special,” said USC coach Paul Mainieri, who coached at LSU for 15 seasons and won a national title there. ”These kids deserve to have something good happen to them. ... I’m glad the fans enjoyed a really good win as well.”
South Carolina (28-26, 6-22 SEC) trailed 3-1 when it scored two runs and got its first hits of the game in the sixth inning.
The Gamecocks then trailed 5-4 to begin the ninth inning when KJ Scobey tied things with a home run into the LSU bullpen with one out. Jase Woita then delivered a pinch-hit triple that just barely missed getting out of the park in the left field corner.
After Blake Jackson was hit by a pitch and LSU intentionally walked Henry Kaczmar to load the bases, Tigers reliever Zac Cowan, a former Blythewood High standout, uncorked a wild pitch on a 2-1 count to score Mashore.
That scored the winning run and set off a wild celebration that carried over into left field.
The Gamecocks will now go for the series win over the Tigers on Friday.
South Carolina knows the only path to the postseason is a run through the SEC Tournament in Hoover next week, where they will have to win five games in five days. But they got a nice boost of momentum against the Tigers, who moved into the top spot in the national polls this week.
“It’s definitely a confidence-builder going into the rest of the season and the SEC Tournament,” Scobey said. “This kind of gets us going on the right track.”
The Gamecocks were held without a hit until the sixth inning but ended with eight over the final four frames. Kaczmar had two triples and Scobey had two hits and a sacrifice fly to score a run.
“To get that spark and to get our offense going at that time was really special in tonight’s game. It’s a big win for this program,” Kaczmar said.
It was one of the better pitching performances in the last half of the season for the Gamecocks. USC had allowed double-digits in six of its last 10 SEC games and only allowed less than seven once in that span, but the trio of Ashton Crowther, Brandon Stone and Matthew Becker handcuffed the Tigers for a lot of the night Thursday.
Crowther made just his second start and battled for 4.1 innings, allowing three runs before giving away to Stone, who allowed two runs in 4.1 innings. Becker recorded the final out of the ninth to earn the win and improve to 3-3 on the season.
It helped that LSU (40-13, 17-11) had a few base-running blunders, including two in the fifth inning with runners getting thrown out at third base on balls hit to the outfield.
“Anything’s possible. Crowther pitched his heart out and Brandon Stone did as well,” Mainieri said. “A lot of guys did a lot of great things.”
USC baseball schedule: Upcoming games
- Friday vs. LSU, 7 p.m. (SEC Network Plus)
- Saturday vs. LSU, 3 p.m. (SEC Network Plus)
- Next week: SEC Tournament
This story was originally published May 15, 2025 at 10:29 PM.