Gamecocks drop regular-season finale, turn focus to SEC baseball tournament

The South Carolina baseball team has known for a few weeks the path it needed to take to reach the NCAA Tournament.

That’s to win five games in five days at the SEC Tournament in Hoover, Alabama, beginning on Tuesday.

The final formality before that point was that the Gamecocks had to close out the regular season against No. 1 LSU at Founders Park. Despite a valiant effort from starting pitcher Dylan Eskew and the bullpen, the Tigers won the last two games, including 7-3 on Saturday afternoon.

The season ended with a strikeout and a very loud “LSU” chant in a nearly empty stadium. It’s not what first-year veteran coach Paul Mainieri envisioned when he was lured out of retirement last June.

“Whenever there’s a transition, there’s a reason there’s a transition,” Mainieri said. “You do the best you can with the players you have. We did the best we could. I thought we would be more competitive in the conference. I didn’t think we had a national championship-caliber team put together, but some days we just got overpowered by the other team.

“I’m not sure what I could have done differently.”

The Gamecocks limp into the SEC Tournament with a 28-28 record. That marks the fourth time in history that South Carolina will finish with a program-worst 28 losses, joining the 1996, 2019 and 2022 teams. The 2020 season ended abruptly because of COVID, so this year will make three times in six complete seasons the Gamecocks have faltered to at least 28 losses. One more loss and they set the school record for most in a single season.

The 6-24 record in SEC play is the worst since they started playing in the conference in 1992. The previous worst record was the 8-22 team in 2022, which also is the last time the team finished with a losing record.

South Carolina will need to win at least one game at the SEC Tournament to avoid its third losing season since 1996 and second in the last four years.

Unless they run the gauntlet in the SEC Tournament, the Gamecocks will miss the NCAA Tournament for the fifth time in 10 seasons. South Carolina earned the No. 15 seed and will most likely play Florida, the No. 10 seed, on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m.

LSU (42-13, 19-11) secured a top-four seed and will receive a double bye in the SEC Tournament.

“We are what we are, and we did the best we could,” Mainieri said. “We have the SEC Tournament, then it will be time to turn the page and try and get better.”

The Gamecocks hung tough with the top-ranked team in the country but surrendered the final two games by a combined 15-4 score after winning the series opener 6-5 on a walk-off wild pitch.

“We had a good win against the No. 1 team in the country two days ago and would’ve liked to win a series,” Mainieri said. “We competed hard today. We scored four runs in two games and it’s hard to win that way.”

LSU hit three home runs on Saturday. South Carolina pitching has allowed 92 home runs this season while only hitting 58 as a team.

Freshman KJ Scobey drove in the first USC run. Fellow freshman and River Bluff product Beau Hollins hit his sixth home run of the season to give South Carolina a short-lived 2-1 lead after four innings.

The Tigers scored three times in the fifth inning and the Gamecocks only had two hits the rest of the way. Henry Kaczmar hit his sixth home run of the season in the eighth inning for the final USC run.

Now all that remains is a miracle five-game run in Hoover or a look to 2026, where Mainieri and his staff will be tasked with rebuilding a roster to be more competitive.

“We’ve already rolled up our sleeves and are working hard at recruiting for next year to make our team the best that we can,” Mainieri said. “But we still have the SEC Tournament, and I really don’t want to get into all that too much.”

This story was originally published May 17, 2025 at 7:25 PM.