The Gamecocks were being no-hit entering the bottom of the fifth inning. That’s when volunteer assistant Stuart Lake gathered the team around in the dugout before the team hit to give them a pep talk.

It took two innings, but Lake’s advice worked.

“He just tells us he’s confident,” Jonah Bride said. “Tonight he said he’s seen no-hitters in the fifth before and I’ve also seen teams get 10 hits after that. We just have to take some confidence in the box.”

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They did, with Bride breaking up Davidson’s Josh Hudson’s no-hitter with no outs in the seventh inning. The junior smashed a double to right-center.

“We didn’t say much about it; it’s kind of a reverse jinx. When you’re throwing a no-hitter you don’t say anything, and when you’re being no-hit you don’t say anything. Jonah is the right man in the right spot tonight,” head coach Chad Holbrook said. “He’s just a baseball player. He knows the situation at hand and tries to do and execute what the pitchers give him.”

He would also drive in the game winning run in the eighth inning, doubling to the same part of the field to give the Gamecocks a 3-2 lead. That score would hold the rest of the game.

Bride would finish going 2-for-4 with an RBI and a run scored. He had two of the team’s three hits, with the other coming on a two-RBI single from Jacob Olson in the seventh inning.

Bride almost missed a home run in the seventh. He ripped a drifting ball to left, and it clanged off one of the pieces of metal out there. Holbrook would challenge the call, but it came back inconclusive.

“We got all kinds of metal out there; we got red metal and yellow metal. All I know was that I heard metal. They said it was inconclusive on the replay and I just said I heard metal,” Holbrook said about the play. “I didn’t say if it was fair or foul; I didn’t know. He had a better view of it than I did, but I know it hit metal. Usually when you hear it that loud, that yellow pole’s solid. That red stuff is kind of cheap. Usually you hear solid stuff; you don’t hear cheap stuff.”

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Bride would have to wait minutes to get back in the box during the review, but two pitches later he broke up the no-hitter.

“That’s tough to come back from,” Holbrook said. “You miss a home run like that, work two strikes and hit a double in the gap there. Jonah’s a steady guy. We don’t win the game without him tonight.”

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The Gamecocks (23-13) now turn their attention to a huge conference series against Florida in Gainesville. Both teams are tied for second in the SEC East behind Kentucky.

Holbrook said he’s not going to put any added emphasis on this series, and his teams knows how big this series is coming up this weekend.

“We’re not paying attention to the standings, but we know it’s a big weekend,” Bride said. “They’re going to be very good and we’re going to have to play our best game.”