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Gamecocks Blow Up Late, Face Elimination After Loss To LSU Tigers

South Carolina's Baseball team hung around for a while, but completely fell apart late in their second game of the SEC Tournament against the LSU Tigers.
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On Tuesday morning, Mark Kingston and the South Carolina Gamecocks put together one of their most complete performances in over a month, drubbing the Georgia Bulldogs and knocking them out of the SEC Baseball Tournament. On Wednesday, Carolina reverted back to playing the way fans had become accustomed to at the end of SEC play, as the batting lineup couldn't capitalize on the few opportunities they created and the pitching staff displayed their lack of depth in latter portion of the contest.

The Tigers got the scoring started in the second inning, as Jordan Thompson drew a full count walk before Brayden Jobert crushed a long ball over the right field fence to put LSU up two runs. Besides those two mistakes, the Gamecocks got a solid outing from sophomore right-hander Eli Jones, who on four and a half days rest, pitched for four innings and gave up four earned runs on five hits, but left South Carolina still hanging around.

The problem that Jones couldn't work around himself was that the Tigers' starting pitcher, Thatcher Hurd, was dispatching the Gamecock's starting lineup, not giving up a baserunner until the fifth inning, when Ethan Petry unleashed one to left field for a solo homer. After giving up four runs in the bottom of the fifth inning, South Carolina came up in the sixth inning needing to respond to avoid having the game get away from them, and for a brief time, looked on the verge on doing so, getting five straight batters on base and scoring two runs in the process.

With one out and the bases loaded, Gavin Casas came up to face left-hander Nate Ackenhausen, in a spot where one hit could potentially either tie the game or give South Carolina the lead. Instead, in a 3-2 count, a slider that looked to be at Casas' elbows was called strike three by the home plate umpire, and from that point on, LSU swarmed the Gamecocks. The Tigers wouldn't give up another run the rest of the game, and battered relievers Jackson Phipps and Brett Thomas, reaching base eight times and scoring four runs.

The Gamecocks now will have to battle for their SEC Tournament lives, and likely, their last glimmer of hope to be a regional host team on Thursday morning at 10:30 AM EDT, when they play the loser of the matchup between Arkansas and Texas A&M.

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