Petry's homer, Kingston's "gut feel" helps South Carolina beat Florida 5-2

Mark Kingston rolled the dice, and it paid off again.

In the top of the fifth inning with No. 6 South Carolina leading No. 3 Florida 5-2, starting pitcher Jack Mahoney looked about out of gas. He had already allowed one run in the inning on a wild pitch, and cleanup hitter BT Riopelle was coming up to the plate as the tying run with one out.

Mahoney had already thrown 88 pitches and faced 21 batters. That 21 is the limit in a game of blackjack, but Kingston decided to let his Jack go for number 22 after a mound visit.

Three pitches later Mahoney induced a 6-5-3 double play ball to end the inning, and his bullpen took over from there.

"Most of that usually is gut feel," Kingston said. "Sometimes Parker goes out to the mound and looks a guy in the eye before he makes his decision on what he wants to do. I think we played our cards right today and the guys really executed and did what we needed them to."

South Carolina beat Florida 5-2 in front of another sellout crowd at Founders Park, clinching the series and setting up an opportunity for a sweep in Saturday’s finale. It is the fourth SEC series win out of six weekends for the Gamecocks and the eighth series win out of 10 overall. On the other side this snapped a streak of 13 consecutive series wins for the Gators dating back to last season.

Mahoney gave up a first inning solo home run to Jac Caglianone, the nation’s leader in them. It was his 23rd of the season, and at the time Florida’s (31-9, 11-6 SEC) two-way player was the only player in the country with at least 20 home runs on the season.

That stat lasted an inning.

After Cole Messina hit a two-run home run off Hurston Waldrep in the bottom half of the first, Waldrep worked himself into more trouble by allowing two baserunners in front of Ethan Petry in the second. The standout freshman, hotter than the pavement outside, deposited a three-run home run out into left field for his 20th blast of the season.

"Our scouting report on him was just to see the ball up," Petry said. "I ended up seeing a splitter up, and I hammered it."

Now with a 5-1 lead in his back pocket, Mahoney went to work. He did not allow a hit in the third inning and worked his way out of a jam with runners on second and third base in the fourth, before his strong finishing act in the fifth. Eli Jones took over on the mound for South Carolina (33-6, 12-4 SEC) after that, and played with fire himself off and on.

His sweeping assortment of breaking balls proved to be mostly effective with four strikeouts, but the Gators were able to find some holes around it. Florida put two runners on base in the seventh to again bring the tying run to the plate in the form of Josh Rivera, but he flew out to right before Jones struck out Riopelle on a 1-2 breaking ball to avert the threat.

"That's what you kind of live for," Jones said. "I grew up my whole life dreaming of being in that moment, and to get the opportunity to actually do it and perform and execute the pitch and strike him out, it's what you look forward to your whole life. It's a great feeling."

Jones had to give way to Chris Veach in the ninth inning after a lead-off walk, but the Presbyterian transfer proceded to sit down all three batters he faced to wrap up the series. Despite missing three quarters of its Opening Day starting infield — Gavin Casas is out for the series along with Will McGillis and Talmadge LeCroy, weekend starter Noah Hall and facing the No. 3 team in the country, South Carolina's machine churned out another win.

"You're dealing without four guys that are elite performers there," Kingston said. "The fact that we were still able to overcome all of that, really proud of the guys that stepped in and played today because we were still able to win."

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