South Carolina baseball had an opportunity to accomplish a very rare feat for the program in the midst of a bad season, but it fell apart in one inning.
The Gamecocks had an opportunity to win a series at Kentucky for just the second time in their last eight attempts with a Sunday rubber game, but the Wildcats broke an early 1-1 tie with five runs in the fourth inning and won 11-5 to clinch the series.
The loss confirmed South Carolina’s (25-20, 4-16 SEC) sixth series loss out of seven SEC weekends and seventh in eight against power four conference opponents, while also sliding this season over yet another threshold the program has seldom suffered. The 16th conference loss confirmed a losing record in SEC play for the sixth time in the last 10 seasons, something South Carolina had only done four times ever prior to that stretch and not since 1997.
It is also the first time the Gamecocks have had back-to-back losing SEC seasons since doing so four years in a row from 1994-1997.
The Gamecocks actually scored first on Gavin Braland’s RBI single, only for Kentucky (25-16, 10-11 SEC) to respond on a solo home run by Luke Lawrence, the first hit of the game off South Carolina starter Dylan Eskew.
Eskew made his second start since an oblique injury he suffered at Arkansas kept him out of action for nearly a month, and mostly held his own. He made it through 3 ⅓ innings with two earned runs allowed, three strikeouts and two walks on 64 pitches, but what happened immediately after he departed decided the game.
Regular midweek starter Jackson Soucie picked up Eskew with a runner on first and one out in a 1-1 game. Not only did he allow the inherited runner to score, the game got completely away.
A nightmare inning saw six straight Wildcats reach base with five stolen bases sprinkled in as the offensive onslaught against Soucie all but decided the game right there. Ryan Schwartz’s two-run single was the first blow, and freshman Tyler Bell’s three-run double with one out cleared the bases and made it a 6-1 game. Soucie did not record an out in his first SEC action since appearing in the Arkansas series and had four runs charged to his line.
South Carolina clawed its way back, even in spite of a four-error inning — three by reliever Matthew Becker on a bobbled ball and two wayward pickoff tosses — gifted the Wildcats another run.
Nathan Hall and Dalton Mashore had RBIs in a two-run sixth, and a pair of two-out RBI singles from KJ Scobey and Cayden Gaskin in the eighth inning even brought the go-ahead run to the plate.
A Jase Woita single would have moved the go-ahead run on base, but a questionable decision by third base coach Monte Lee to send Scobey to the plate extinguished the inning. Kentucky left fielder Cole Hage had the simplest outfield assist of his career, nailing Scobey by about 20 feet to end the inning.
Kentucky scored four more in the eighth inning to completely put the game out of reach, with Hage's two-run single putting the final nail in the coffin.
South Carolina returns to action Tuesday with a home midweek against Charleston Southern, and will jump back into SEC play with a three-game home series against Florida starting on Friday.
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