HOOVER, Ala. — Number 29 holds a special place in South Carolina baseball history.
It’s the number Michael Roth wore as the most successful pitcher in College World Series history. It’s the number of home NCAA Tournament games the program won in a staggering stretch starting from the 2002 Super Regional through the 2014 regional opener, 29 wins in 30 games including the NCAA’s all-time record streak in there.
But those days are long gone, and now 29 means something different.
It’s the new record number of losses in a season for the program.
Florida beat South Carolina 11-3 on day one of the SEC Tournament at the Hoover Met, finally drawing a miserable first campaign under Paul Mainieri era to a close with a 28-29 record.
For any college sports team coming off a bad regular season, the conference tournament is always the final lifeline. Something of a clean slate, with that dangling carrot of an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament hanging at the end of the week.
South Carolina’s hope lasted all of one inning.
The Gamecocks scored first off Florida (38-19) starter Billy Barlow, but even that felt like a letdown with the run coming on Jase Woita’s bases loaded double play ball after the first three batters of the game all reached. Brandon Stone pitched one clean inning, but the Gators teed off on him the rest of the day, showing exactly what South Carolina is currently lacking in the loudest way possible.
After a single and a walk, Bobby Boser’s three run home run out to straight away center field gave the Gators a 3-1 lead. It was his 16th blast of the season. One inning later Brody Donay homered, his 17th. Two players with at least 16 homers, against a South Carolina team which only had one player — currently injured Ethan Petry — even reach double-digits. The combined 33 home runs from just those two players nearly reached the 35 that the top seven hitters in South Carolina’s lineup had combined.
Florida’s offense, beat up as badly as anyone’s in the conference with a slew of injuries still plaguing the depth, continued adding on. South Carolina’s could not conjure up a single extra base against essentially the regular collection of midweek arms for Kevin O’Sullivan’s squad until back-to-back eighth inning doubles at least made the score look a little more respectable.
The details on this day were fairly trivial, though. This wretched season was always going to end in Hoover, one way or another.
South Carolina lost to a significantly more talented team, as it has all year. The game was not competitive by any stretch of the word, as most of them have not been. It confirmed this as the losingest season in the 133-year history of the program, as anyone paying close attention could have forecasted for at least the last month.
Now after a season completely devoid of hope, direction, identity, plan and certainly anything approaching positive results, there is only one question for Mainieri,, his staff and the administration above him.
How do you fix it?
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