For most of its doubleheader at Kentucky, South Carolina baseball looked dead.
A flat game one performance in a 7-3 loss, a deficit nearly the entire way in game two, five outs away from another series loss.
But Will Tippett’s two-run home run in the eighth inning gave the Gamecocks their first lead of the day, Ashton Crowther slammed the door in relief and South Carolina 5-4 win salvaged a split in Lexington with a chance to take the series tomorrow.
The day’s headline did not come from either result but actually from an injury. South Carolina star Ethan Petry left the first game with an injury after running into the wall chasing a ball in foul territory, and did not appear in game two. Dalton Mashore replaced him both in game one and had his starting spot in game two, which forced Paul Mainieri to shuffle his lineup.
Brandon Stone made the game one start after his 86-pitch complete game victory last week. He was solid, and very efficient again, but not dominant.
The two-run home run he allowed to Carson Hansen in the first inning put South Carolina (25-19, 5-15 SEC) in the hole, but he settled in well after that. His offense got the two runs back thanks to RBIs from Beau Hollins and Gavin Braland. From there, Stone and Kentucky (24-16, 9-11 SEC) starter Nate Harris both locked in. At one point the duo combined to retire 14 straight batters and face 20 in a row without allowing a hit, firing zeroes and doing so in quick succession.
A blazing fast pace saw the game reach the fifth inning in under an hour still knotted 2-2, but Stone’s defense let him down. A KJ Scobey error on a would-be inning-ending groundball plated the go-ahead run in the fifth, the first of four consecutive innings the Wildcats scored at least one run.
Kentucky’s small ball style has been a hallmark of Nick Mingione’s program as long as he has been there, and it burned the Gamecocks all day. The Wildcats stole 10 bases on the day, and a sixth inning double-steal set up a sacrifice fly for an insurance run. Freshman star Tyler Bell’s seventh inning RBI double made it 5-2, and ended a day for Stone which saw him eat up seven innings, but leave with a three-run deficit.
Two more runs in the eighth — after South Carolina loaded the bases with nobody out but only scored one in the top half — put the game away and wrapped up game one.
Game two was a similar story of offensive frustration for the Gamecocks. They put at least one runner on base in all nine innings, but spent most of the day lacking a clutch hit. South Carolina left nine runners on base and even when it scored, it still felt like a missed opportunity. A two-run third inning ended in a double play with runners on the corners and one out, and felt like it could be a key moment in the game when Kentucky struck back by taking a 4-3 lead on a successful squeeze play in the fifth.
But Jake McCoy pitched out of some tough jams himself. He stranded two runners with a clutch strikeout to end the first inning and made one of the plays of his college career to end the fourth when he nailed Kentucky’s Cole Hage trying to steal home on an eerily similar play to one Kentucky scored on against Matthew Becker last year.
All of it held his team in the game long enough for Caleb Jones and Crowther to retire all 13 batters they faced out of the bullpen, and provide the offense with a lifeline.
Mashore — only in the game at all because of Petry’s earlier injury — led the eighth inning off with a single, stole second, advanced to third on a passed ball and had a perfect, up close view of Tippett’s mammoth 3-1 swing over the wall in left field, flipping the game around.
One swing was all South Carolina needed, and it came from an unlikely source.
South Carolina will go for just its second series win at Kentucky since 2008 in tomorrow’s rubber game, a 1 p.m. first pitch.
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