From Miami Miracle to meal money: Reliving South Carolina's 2002 season

Shortly after the news came out, Drew Meyer’s phone buzzed.

It was Mark Kingston.

Right before South Carolina’s head coach texted Meyer, details about the Gamecocks’ trip to Texas for a three game series began trickling out.

Kingston’s text was succinct, simply asking if Meyer wanted another shot at the Longhorns.

“Hell yeah I want back in, however you probably have a better option in the dugout. I pulled my back getting out of bed this morning,” Meyer told GamecockCentral, laughing. “Let’s rally up the crew and take a plane to Austin and play those guys on a side field and have a little old man fun.”

Meyer’s last game in a South Carolina uniform came almost two decades ago when the 2002 Gamecocks played Texas in Omaha with the winner taking home the national championship.

The Gamecocks ultimately lost, ending then head coach Ray Tanner’s first bid at a national championship. But the game cemented the team as one of the best teams in program history, one we now get to relive as the Gamecocks head to Texas again for a three-game series starting Friday.

Haunting heartbreaks

Trey Dyson woke up the morning of June 4, 2000 knowing later that day he’d be packing to go to Omaha.

South Carolina was one of the best teams in the country that year and coming off a SEC regular season title, now sitting one win away from the College World Series.

After splitting the first two games of a Super Regional with Louisiana Lafayette, the Gamecocks needed one win to end a 15-year World Series drought.

Dyson went to bed disappointed, with the Gamecocks losing game three by a run and having one of the program’s best teams end nine innings short of college baseball’s pinnacle.

“We dominated the league that year,” Dyson remembered. “To lose to Louisiana Lafayette in game three, it was embarrassing. Very embarrassing. That stuck with me a little bit.”

Fast forward a year and the Gamecocks found themselves in a similar situation in game three against Stanford, this time on the road.

“Man we were one pitch away from Omaha that year,” Landon Powell said. “If that ball’s three feet one way or another we probably win and go to Omaha.”

What awaited the Gamecocks in 2002 was a talented roster full of returning players and a host of junior college talent converging for what turned into a magical year and a magical run for South Carolina.

Inward arrogance

Confidence and winning operate a lot like the chicken and the egg.

Teams who are confident usually win, and teams who win are usually confident. The two work in tandem.

In 2002, the Gamecocks had a lot of both and some knew it from the moment the 2001 season ended.

“We couldn’t wait to get back out there,” Meyer said. “We just had so much confidence. Some people would call it cocky around Five Points, but we had confidence. We always felt like we shouldn’t lose.”

South Carolina started its season 9-0, started SEC play 16-2 and only lost one SEC series the entire year, cutting through the conference like a hot knife through butter.

“Here’s how good coach Tanner was at motivating. They were 20-3 and coach Tanner was like, ‘Ah, the 2000 team was 22-1 at this point. Don’t hang your hat on that.’ He’d never let that group feel good,” Stuart Lake said. “I’m thinking we’d get rolling and coach Tanner would never let them let up.”

Nine players hit over .300 that year with three having at least 15 home runs.

“We were cocky as s—t, man. We knew we were the best. We had some traditional chants we did but we would intimidate the hell out of other teams,” Yaron Peters said. “We were big, too. You had me, Dyson and Garris (Gonce) and big, thick and strong gorilla ball types of players.”

They became known for their power, hitting 122 home runs as a team, led by Peters’ school-record 29, with no thoughts about making the tournament, but more about how far this team could go.

“The tournament talk was a thing of the past. We were a top-ranked team the previous two years,” Dyson said. “We’d been there and done that. The question was: could we win game three?”

They’d go 27-7 at home that year in the regular season, 15-5 in the SEC and didn’t lose a series at Sarge Frye all year.

“We never thought we were going to lose there,” Jon Coutlangus said. “No matter who we played, every game we started the crowd was into every pitch.”

Nail-biting final day

But, despite the obvious success, the Gamecocks went into their final weekend at Georgia needing some help to win the SEC regular season title.

South Carolina sat at 18-8 with the Tide 20-7 and needing sweeps in both series to win the crown outright. Alabama did its part in Baton Rouge, and as news started to trickle through the dugout in Athens.

As the Gamecocks played on the final day of the year, they realized what could happen.

“Everyone knew that if we won we’d be SEC champions but no one said anything about it,” Dyson said.

Like everything that year, the Gamecocks had a flair for the dramatic with Demetric Smith coming off the bench and delivering an eighth-inning, two-run double to take the lead late.

Six outs later, the Gamecocks were dog piling in Athens.

“Being from Georgia—I love Georgia, I love coach Perno, I wanted to go to Georgia but it didn’t work out,” Blake Taylor said. The chance to close out against Georgia and win the SEC and really experience my first dog pile and be on the bottom of that dog pile was unbelievable. That was my first true win of anything.”

Powell, who caught the game, still remembers it fondly.

“We dog piled on Georgia’s field,” he said, laughing. “And we weren’t even competing with them for the SEC championship. Imagine how they felt.”

The Gamecocks returned back to Columbia SEC champs for the second time in three years knowing they just locked up a national seed and would be at home in the postseason as long as they kept winning.

“To end it with a victory like that, I think that’s when we felt like we were on to something,” Meyer said. “That this is a damn good team.”

SEC tournament build up

With little to fight for down in Hoover, the Gamecocks went down to the SEC Tournament loose.

“We knew those games didn’t have any bearing on getting to Omaha,” Garris Gonce said. “If you’re good enough it doesn’t matter when you go to Hoover.”

The team already had a postseason berth and a likely national seed locked up no matter what they did down there, and Powell joked it was almost like a vacation for a few days.

“That hotel had the best pillows in the game right there, boy. That’s what I remember. It sounds cocky, but that’s how we went into the tournament,” Coutlangus said. “We had no pressure cause the regional was the real work that needed to be done.”

They used that week to get healthy; Peters didn’t play much dealing with a hamstring injury, but did get some good news down there in being named SEC Player of the Year.

“I remember walking around the mall and Phillip Fulmer comes up to me and he goes, ‘Mr. Peters right? Congratulations.’ I’m like congratulations for what? He goes, ‘SEC Player of the Year.’ I’m like huh? I didn’t know. He told me,” he said. “That’s how I found out I got SEC player of the year.”

The Gamecocks still found ways to win with their backs against the wall—a common trait carried over the next few weeks—going through the loser’s bracket and making it all the way to a title game before losing to Alabama.

They’d go home tournament runners up and ready for the real work: the NCAA Tournament.

“As soon as we got home, there wasn’t a lot of talk about it,” Lake said. “It was about a regional and who we were getting and how we matched up with them.”

Blake Taylor, Yaron Peters and the next step

South Carolina breezed through its first two games of the regional at home, taking care of VCU and North Carolina.

The Tar Heels found their way to the regional final needing two wins to knock the Gamecocks out. South Carolina lost game one of a doubleheader, forcing a winner-take-all game that night.

A Gamecock team with so many expectations in the preseason was one bad break away from not getting back to even a super regional. They’d start Blake Taylor in game two and the rest is history.

The reliever turned starter spun a brilliant game, pitching all nine innings and allowing just one run and striking out 11.

“I remember just feeling in total control and in total command of all three pitches,” “That day, when you hear athletes talk about being in the zone, I was in that zone. I could do whatever I wanted.”

Peters hit two homers and drove in all three runs as the Gamecocks beat UNC 3-1, advancing one step closer to Omaha.

“Blake was my roommate. Him and me were really, really tight,” Peters said. “I remember us making jokes that him and me had sore backs from carrying the team."

The win set up a showdown with reigning national champions Miami at Sarge Frye.

The Miracle against Miami

Gamecock assistant at the time Jim Toman was usually loose and jovial entering a game, no matter the stakes.

But the night before game three against that Miami team, he was different.

“I remember that. Toman and I went somewhere with our wives and just hung out. He’s so funny and usually so optimistic,” Lake said. “That night he was so locked in. it was like, ‘We got to win tomorrow.’ There was no joking around.”

South Carolina had just split the first two games against Miami setting up for a winner-take-all game to get to the College World Series for the third year in a row.

“In game three, I’m doing everything different than I did the previous two years on this day,” Dyson said. “I’m trying to do anything to reverse the energy if you will.”

But it was Dyson and Gonce, scuffling at the time, not in the lineup to start the game, watching the Gamecocks trail by three entering the ninth inning.

“That’s a sinking feeling,” Gonce said. “I’m staring down the barrel of sitting my last game at South Carolina and not able to do anything about it.”

As the Gamecocks went to the ninth needing at least three runs to tie the game, they understood the odds.

“It hits you that this is it. For two years we said we’d get them next year,” Lake said. “Well this is next year.”

Then pandemonium happened.

Peters led off with a double. Brian Buscher singled to right. Dyson, pinch hitting, doubled home Peters.

“Every card that was dealt we played it right," Peters said.

One of the biggest plays of the inning came with Buscher taking off on an error by the second baseman, sliding in safe for the second run of the inning.

“I saw Toman stop him,” Lake said. “He takes off and I’m like, ‘Oh my god.’ I’m thinking this guy’s had a phenomenal year, and this is what he’s going to be remembered by? It’s like Sid Bream sliding in safe."

Gonce came in off the bench and doubled home a run and, with Meyer up, Miami threw two balls to the backstop to plate two more runs. When all’s said and done, the Gamecocks were up by a run thanks to a five-run ninth.

“To that day it’s the most exciting and most memorable game I’ve ever played in,” Gonce said.

The Gamecocks won that day, ending a 17-year College World Series drought, and did it on their home field.

“As a lifelong Gamecock, when we beat Miami it was an unbelievable sense of pride that came over me,” Dyson said. “I’ve done something here to rectify a lot of heartache for Gamecock fans in their graves right now.”

It was Tanner’s first trip to Omaha as well after getting painstakingly close the previous two seasons.

“All of us had that one goal: we had to get coach Tanner to the World Series. I was in my fourth year and turned down some jobs to that point. He kept saying I better get a job, I got to get to Omaha with you,” Lake said. “I got a really cool picture at my house after we beat Miami. It’s chaos and that’s literally what he’s saying. He’s like, ‘I guess you’re leaving now.’”

The path to Texas

Powell grew up around baseball, specifically college baseball. He remembers watching Baseball Tonight over the summer and seeing the reds, blues and yellows of Rosenblatt Stadium’s seats and dreaming of playing there.

“It's all this attention, all this hype,” Peters said. “I remember thinking this is like being in the big leagues. This is what it feels like.”

But, even with all the fanfare, the Gamecocks’ trip didn’t start off on the right foot. Georgia Tech blasted them 11-0, putting Tanner and South Carolina one game away from elimination.

“You coach for 17 years and work so hard to recruit and grind. You finally break through to get to Omaha and the first game you lose 11-0. You didn’t just get beat you got embarrassed,” Powell said. “That day on the bus he didn’t have much to give. He was just shocked.”

The Gamecocks would have to beat a Nebraska team to stay alive.

“We’re not going 0-2 here,” Lake said. “We’re not going 0-2 anywhere.”

They didn’t, even though they had to play what essentially amounted to a home game for the Cornhuskers with Lincoln less than an hour away from Omaha.

“If it sat 25,000 people they had 24,500 rooting against us,” Gonce said.

The Gamecocks sent them home unhappy with Yaron Peters hitting a two-run homer in the eighth to break a tie.

“Why did they pitch to Yaron Peters? Why did they throw to him in that situation when he hits the home run to win it?" Powell said. "It doesn’t make any sense."

After staying alive again in a 9-5 win over Georgia Tech, the Gamecocks continued cutting through the loser's bracket.

“We had a bunch of players who rallied together because it was like, ‘We got to win these games. We need meal money.’ Every day we stayed here it was more meal money.”

The only thing standing between the Gamecocks and a shot at the title were two games against Clemson.

“We were getting calls like crazy about them shutting down the state to watch these games. It’s that big. We knew it,” Meyer said. “We just did not like Clemson at all. I mean, who does? That’s part of the rivalry. It was the same way with them to us.”

The Tigers that year were a behemoth in college baseball with the three headed monster of Khalil Greene, Jeff Baker and Michael Johnson.

The Gamecocks passed both tests with flying colors, winning both games by a combined score of 22-6 in what turned into a pretty emotional two games and sending South Carolina to a national championship game against Texas.

“It was just starting to sink in just how much it meant to beat them. It was like a relief,” Coutlangus said. “The way my mind worked, it felt like we were playing with house money in that national championship game.”

Title game against Texas

Back then, the title game was winner-take-all and Texas had played three games in a week before playing the Gamecocks. South Carolina, meanwhile, was coming off its fifth game in six days.

“I think emotionally it was tough,” Meyer said. “We played Clemson at one o’clock on a Friday and that game ended at 4:16. First pitch for the national championship game was 20 hours later at 12:40.”

It was a quick turnaround, having to play less than 24 hours later, something a taxed Gamecock pitching staff struggled with.

“We had a lot of hot, long series,” Lake said. “I remember you could get back, ate and you were ready to go. I remember saying to my wife, ‘Dang, I really wish we had a day off.’”

South Carolina lost 12-6. In 2003, a year later, champions were decided by a best of three series.

“To me a two out of three would have given us a good chance to win. We won every series we played that year,” Taylor said. “I really feel like having two out of three it could have been a different story. Maybe a day off helps us; maybe it doesn’t from a pitching standpoint.”

A Gamecock team that didn’t have a losing record to any team that season lost one overall season series that year, just to Texas, in the one game.

“We proved time and time again if you run up against us in a series in multiple games we had a shot to beat anybody,” Gonce said.

Cementing a place in history

The debate will rage between both fan bases about the better team and who would have won in the three-game series, but there’s no disputing the 2002 team may be one of the best Gamecock teams of all time.

That team spawned a hall of fame coach in Tanner and all three assistants—Toman, Lake and Jerry Meyers—all went on to become head coaches.

Five different players played in the big leagues from that team and the trio of Powell, Dyson and Coutlangus are all coaches at North Greenville University.

The trip in 2002 opened the floodgates for South Carolina with the Gamecocks making the College World Series again in 2003 and 2004 before three more trips (and two titles) from 2010-12.

“We knew we were going to back to Omaha,” Coutlangus said. “We were playing in regionals and super regionals and it’s like, ‘Come try and beat us. We’ve been there before.’ Getting that off your back and moving forward really helped.”

To this day a lot of the guys on that team haven’t sat down to rewatch all of the game, if any of it, and if they do it’s to show their children some of the glory days.

It’s still a close team—and if you don’t believe that, just ask anyone on the team—with guys still taking annual vacations together and telling stories of the good ole days.

Moving forward

This weekend, the Gamecocks and Longhorns will play a three-game series the Gamecocks didn’t get 20 years ago, the first match up between the two programs since 2002.

“It’s great. It brings awareness to our history and goes back more than just 2010 or 2011 stuff,” Meyer said. “I hope it leads to something more where coaches lead to do this more like the Chick-Fil-A college kickoff.”

It’s the first time these two teams will play and it not be played in Omaha at Rosenblatt Stadium.

Typically storied programs don’t meet up this early in the year, but the Gamecocks and Longhorns are bucking that trend.

“South Carolina and Texas can be like a Southern Cal and Notre Dame rivalry. That can be a cool thing. In order to win a national championship and be successful in Omaha you have to play these big-time schools,” Peters said. “You have to earn it.”

The Gamecocks are off to a rousing start this year, winning their first 11 games and taking a 16-game win streak into this weekend’s series.

"It shows our guys we trust them. It’s going to show people our program,” Lake said. “It’s good for us for a lot of reasons to recruiting and showing national people these guys are going to play. This creates a SEC or regional or super regional environment so when you get there again you’re not getting the first taste of it then.”