HOOVER, Ala. — Cole Messina has an ever-expanding list of titles.

Cleanup hitter. Emotional leader for South Carolina baseball. All-SEC catcher. Buster Posey Award semifinalist, the title given to the nation’s top catcher.

And now, SEC Tournament hero.

Messina has eight RBIs through two blistering performances for the Gamecocks, saving his crowning moment — so far — for the ninth inning of Wednesday’s game when he tagged Arkansas relief ace Gabe Gaeckle with a two-run home run out to center field.

It broke a 4-4 tie, ended up being the decisive swing in South Carolina’s 6-5 victory, and was the first home run Gaeckle had allowed all season on the 158th batter he faced.

“He's the heart and soul of our team,” Mark Kingston said. “And when the heart and soul of your team is playing that well, it just allows everybody else to kind of follow suit.”

The final home run was as surprising as any swing all season for this South Carolina (35-21) club. Certainly not because of the man who hit it or even the situation, but everything surrounding it. Not only doing what nobody else in the country has by touching one off on Gaeckle, but hitting it out to dead center field at the notoriously pitcher friendly Hoover Metropolitan Stadium.

It is an outfield more resembling a national park in size, and Messina has laid waste to its deepest dimensions three times in two days.

Most astonishingly of it all, the pitch selection. He was waiting on a fastball from the flamethrower, didn’t get one, and crushed it anyway.

When you’re this hot, everything you touch turns to gold.

“I knew he had a good fastball,” Messina said. “I sold out for the fastball, and he ended up throwing a slider, and [I] just took my best swing. I didn't really think I was going to hit a slider, but it happened. I took a good swing, and the ball got outta here.”

Messina started his Wednesday heroics with a third inning RBI single, continued them with a fifth inning two-run home run and added the dagger late, all while handling a pitching staff behind the plate which pieced together a second consecutive solid outing.

The performance guided South Carolina into a winner’s bracket game against LSU tomorrow. And if there was even a sliver of doubt about this team’s NCAA Tournament bubble status after yesterday’s win, there is absolutely none remaining.

And wherever that regional is, the Gamecocks will head there with indescribably better vibes than the start of this week, regardless of how the rest of the SEC Tournament plays out. When they arrived in Hoover, it was a six-game losing streak. Now they have won twice and even more importantly, gotten back to something of an identity leading into the biggest games of the year.

Garrett Gainey took the mound again and hung in for the third straight time against a top-10 team, following up his starts against Georgia and Tennessee by getting the final nine outs against the Razorbacks with just one run allowed. Chris Veach showed his fine form with yesterday’s dominant performance against Alabama. And even Eli Jones, the beleaguered staff ace, looked like something approaching his best self again with 10 effective outs to open Wednesday.

And of course, the man catching the pitches from all of them is the glue holding it all together.

“Cole drove in five of our six runs,” Kingston said. “So that's the team I think we're capable of being on any given day, and we beat one of the best teams in the country.

The team South Carolina is capable of being on its best day, and Messina’s best day.

Those two are almost inseparable at this point.

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