South Carolina baseball, Paul Skenes, Gamecocks

LSU baseball has been ranked No. 1 in the country from wire-to-wire, the overwhelming favorite to win this year’s National Championship. The Tigers are 25-4, have won every series this season and have some of the most impressive individuals in the country.

Dylan Crews, the likely Golden Spikes award winner and projected No. 1 overall pick in July’s MLB draft who patrols center field for LSU, is hitting .531 and is averaging over an RBI per game. Staff ace Paul Skenes is who you would come up with “if you were going to design a pitcher in a lab” according to Mark Kingston. Skenes has a 0.83 ERA, and 83 strikeouts to just eight walks in his seven starts this season.

Crews, Skenes and the rest of the Tigers will be heading into Columbia for a showdown series with No. 6 South Carolina starting Thursday night at Founders Park.

The challenge is significant, and the Gamecocks know it. They’re also more than ready.

"Of course it's a great opportunity,” pitcher Eli Jerzembeck said. “But they're facing South Carolina. It's not us facing LSU, they're coming in and facing us. I'm ready for it, and it's going to be a fun ride."

This is the type of series that used to be commonplace in Columbia when South Carolina was a mainstay in the sport’s upper echelon. But going off the D1Baseball rankings, this is the first time since 2016 there has been a top-10 series in Columbia. A seven-year wait that will end on Thursday night in front of what should be an electric atmosphere, and the biggest weekend of regular season baseball of the Kingston era so far.

Jerzembeck’s confidence is both well-placed and emblematic of the different swagger around the Gamecocks this year. It is not getting nearly the national buzz or attention as what is happening in Baton Rouge, but South Carolina is off to its own highly impressive start. South Carolina is 27-3 overall, 8-1 in SEC play and still yet to drop a game at Founders Park in 18 outings.

It will not be a case of David vs. Goliath, or at least South Carolina is not approaching it that way.

“We are a confident team,” Kingston said. “And we should be. They’ve earned the right to have confidence. When you win 27 of your first 30 games, you should be confident. We also respect every team that we play including the one coming in this weekend, but we will never back down from anybody, either.”

LSU will mark a stretch of three consecutive weekends facing teams currently ranked in the top-four nationally in the D1 poll, with series against Vanderbilt and Florida also looming. South Carolina is one of just five teams in the country who will have to face all three of those opponents at any point this season, and the only one who will run the gauntlet in three consecutive weekends.

Not only is it the toughest stretch the Gamecocks will see anywhere on their regular season schedule, it is about as difficult of a stretch as anyone in America will face.

It all starts with Skenes in the series opener. But like everyone else around the program who has been waiting for this series with the anticipation of a boiled pot ready to burst, South Carolina’s lineup is eager for the challenge.

With Skenes, the rest of LSU’s staff and all the other tough opponents South Carolina is about to encounter, the Gamecocks are ready. They feel like they belong at the table with the rest of college baseball’s elites, a statement that has not been true in Columbia for several years.

The only way to validate that is by doing it on the field, starting at 7 p.m. Thursday night.

“I think it’s a challenge for us, and I think we’re excited,” Cole Messina said about facing Skenes. “We’re going to prepare today for him, and we’re going to go get him.”

****************************************************************************************

For all the latest updates, analysis and live commentary on South Carolina baseball going into the LSU series, subscribe to the insider's forum.