Gamecocks get good news on injured OF TJ Hopkins

South Carolina received good news Monday afternoon when an MRI revealed that outfielder TJ Hopkins didn’t suffer any cartilage or ligament damage to his right knee after leaving Sunday’s game against Texas A&M with an injury.

Hopkins crashed into the wall in center field attempting to make a catch during the third inning and had his glove fall over the wall. He hopped the fence to retrieve his glove and remained in the game, but left moments later after a leadoff single in the fourth inning.

The freshman watched the remainder of the game from the dugout with an air cast on his leg, and USC coach Chad Holbrook feared that Hopkins had suffered damage that would cause him to miss at least a couple of weeks.

According to USC, Hopkins is day-to-day and could travel with the team this weekend to play at Alabama.

Hopkins is batting .321 with four doubles, one home run, 10 RBIs and stolen seven bases despite playing in only 33 games with 23 starts.

Holbrook said Monday on 107.5 The Game that the plan was for Hopkins to play regularly toward the latter part of the season before he was injured Sunday. With the MRI results showing no major damage, it appears that Hopkins will be a regular member of the lineup moving forward.

“It kills us not having him in there, because he has shown that he can make a difference in a game,” Holbrook said. “I was kind of planning on sticking him in there about every day because we were having such difficult scoring and had kind of made our mind up to go that way, and then he tweaks his knee, but that’s baseball. Sometimes it happens that way.”

This story was originally published May 16, 2016 at 2:41 PM with the headline "Gamecocks get good news on injured OF TJ Hopkins."