Selection Sunday for the basketball teams, Salvage Sunday for baseball.
South Carolina baseball responded from losing the first two games of its SEC opening series at Ole MIss with a 6-2 victory in the Sunday game, escaping Oxford with one conference win on the board before heading back home next weekend.
Hitting with runners on base has been the constant issue for South Carolina (15-5, 1-2 SEC), going just 5-for-31 (.161) with runners on base at the plate in the first two games of the series. It led to Mark Kingston completely shuffling his lineup in an attempt to just try to get something going.
Parker Noland moved into the lead-off spot, Ethan Petry jumped up to bat second, Kennedy Jones found himself in the No. 3 spot after leading off yesterday and Tyler Causey played defense at first base after exclusively serving as a DH so far this year, replacing Gavin Casas. Blake Jackson, who had been platooning with Jones in left field, also started in left while Jones moved into the newly open DH role.
Kingston’s lineup blender paid off in the second inning when Causey cracked a two-run home run out to left field to give him at least one hit in seven of the last nine games. Noland then added his second hit in as many innings with an RBI knock to make it 3-0, giving Sunday starter Roman Kimball some breathing room.
He was unable to do much with it, though.
Kimball only faced 10 batters in another discouraging outing, walking five of them and getting the lift from Kingston with two outs in the second inning. He significantly struggled commanding all of his pitches, particularly missing glove side, with his pitches running inside to left-handed hitters and well outside to the right-handed bats.
All of it meant Matthew Becker had to pick up his teammate in a huge way, entering into a bases loaded mess with Andrew Fischer — who homered three times for Ole Miss (15-6, 2-1 SEC) yesterday — at the plate.
Becker induced a weak rollover to third, and never looked back. The left-handed reliever got into his best groove of the season, retiring nine straight batters at one point and firing 5 ⅓ innings of two-run, four-hit relief ball with four strikeouts and no walks. It was the type of pitching effort the Gamecocks sorely needed while the offense was struggling, and it seemed to spark the bats.
Talmadge LeCroy whacked a two-run double in the fifth inning to provide some insurance, and one more run crossed on an Ole Miss error to account for the second three-run inning of the day.
Becker carried the game all the way to the eighth,where Garrett Gainey took over to clean up the final six outs.
South Carolina will be in Greenville for a Tuesday midweek against USC Upstate before hosting Vanderilt for its first SEC series next weekend.
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