It ended before it started. Six batters, six runs for Ole Miss baseball to open up the series finale at South Carolina, a seven-run first inning and no chance at a recovery after that.

Ole Miss salvaged the final game of the weekend at Founders Park with a 12-2 win, avoiding a sweep and halting South Carolina’s winning streak at three in emphatic fashion.

"Momentum in baseball is as good as tomorrow's starting pitcher," Paul Mainieri said. "I think that was pretty evident today."

All week, the plan was for Dylan Eskew to start the Saturday game. Eskew missed a month with an oblique injury, but pitched three innings last Saturday at Texas A&M in his first start back and Mainieri said he was optimistic he could start again. This time, it was a lower back injury that sidelined him.

"I just felt that we couldn't throw him out there," Mainieri said. "He just came off the oblique thing, and now he's got a back issue. I just felt like if we tried to pitch him today he probably would not have been very effective, and we would have probably been dealing with it for the remainder of the year."

But Jarvis Evans Jr. ended up making the start, and the Georgia transfer did not record an out. He gave up a lead-off home run to Mitchell Sanford, walked one and then allowed three straight singles. He departed the game with a 2-0 deficit and the bases loaded, a mess for sophomore reliever Parker Marlatt to inherit. Marlatt hastily jogged out to the bullpen after the fourth batter of the game and entered to face the sixth, giving him just three or four minutes of real time to get loose before getting on the mound.

Ole Miss (28-12, 10-8 SEC) catcher Austin Fawley took advantage, crushing a grand slam off Marlatt for his second home run of the weekend to make it 6-0 after as many batters. The visitors tacked on one more run in the frame thanks to four straight walks — one from Marlatt, three by Matthew Becker — and finally ended the half inning after 30 minutes, 56 pitches, three pitchers, 13 batters and obviously most important of all, seven runs on five hits.

Freshman first baseman provided South Carolina’s only offense of the day with a two-run homer into the home bullpen in the second inning. The Gamecocks only had two other hits — both singles — against Ole Miss starter Mashon Nichols and reliever Will McCausland.

Becker carried the game into the fifth inning with only one more run allowed, but Tyler Pitzer walked all three batters he faced and two came around to score, Aydin Palmer allowed a pair of runs and Ole Miss moved the game into run-rule territory with five runs over the final two frames.

"It's hard to win when you walk 10 batters," Mainieri said. "That's for sure. It's something we didn't do the last two days."

A 1-2-3 bottom of the seventh ended the day early, and officially confirmed a result that was inevitable from the first inning on.

"Today was one game, but it's disappointing," Mainieri said. "We were hoping for a sweep. We've dug ourselves such a big hole in the league that a sweep would've given us a lot of hope."

South Carolina will conclude its five-game homestand with a midweek against North Florida on Tuesday night before returning to SEC play on the road at Kentucky next Friday.

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