The beauty of the game is it’s truly game to game. Win one after a bad stretch, the hope rises anew that it can be the start of a season-saving rally. Win the next one and that hope becomes a little harder and sharper around the edges, the team knowing that the heap of ashes it currently sits in can be fanned back into a bonfire.
South Carolina, about down to its last chance at the postseason, checked into an April 19 game hosting No. 11 Ole Miss already holding the win in the series. But the Gamecocks knew they really needed to sweep to give them even further of a push.
The Rebels scored six runs in the first inning on the way to a 12-2 “Salvage Saturday” run-ruled rout at Ray Tanner Field at Founders Park. Before USC got an out.
“Your momentum in baseball is as good as your next day’s starting pitcher,” USC coach Paul Mainieri said.
Starter Jarvis Evans lasted five batters, giving up a leadoff home run, a walk and three straight hits, three of the four knocks coming with two strikes. He started after Mainieri said that Dylan Eskew was looking good to start after being out for nearly a month, but back soreness waylaid that plan.
Already down two with the bases loaded and nobody out, Mainieri summoned Parker Marlatt, his most trusted reliever, from the bullpen. Marlatt had a scant four minutes to warm up, but was still put in the game.
He gave up a grand slam, USC’s third in the last four SEC games, before recording two outs. Yet he was lifted after that in favor of Matthew Becker, one of the most inconsistent hurlers on the team.
“He was ready. We wouldn’t bring him in … if he wasn’t ready,” Mainieri said. “They radioed down that he was ready to go.”
Becker promptly issued three straight walks, the last to force in a run, before recording the merciful final out. It was 7-0, but a lot of game left.
The Gamecocks, needing every baserunner they could get, recorded their first two outs on three pitches. The rest of the game went as dictated with such an amazingly awful start, although USC got two runs back in the second inning and Becker tossed four shutout innings after his entrance.
But once Ole Miss added another solo homer in the sixth, Becker was done, and so were the Gamecocks. The Rebels handed USC its third run-ruled decision, and second in two series, in 18 SEC games.
At 23-18, 4-14 SEC, USC needs to go at least 9-3 in its next four series and probably win a game or two at the SEC Tournament to make the postseason. It was always going to be a deep pit to climb from after last week’s unsettling sweep at Texas A&M, but USC’s starting pitching and defense (five double plays) won the first two games against Ole Miss.
A sweep would have supplied a flame, one that just needed some oxygen to ignite tinder and start attacking the kindling under the logs. Instead, a steel-toed boot with the opponent’s logo stamped on it landed squarely on the spark.
“A sweep would have given us a lot of hope,” Mainieri said. “We still have a chance to accomplish some things but obviously letting one get away from us at home like that was very disappointing today.”
USC has another midweek game and then travels to Kentucky, a place where it has hardly ever played well, next weekend. The Wildcats aren’t nearly as dangerous as they were last year when they advanced to their first College World Series, but the Gamecocks have only won five series in 16 tries at Kentucky and one in their last seven (which was in 2021).
And after the last game of the Ole Miss series, the Gamecocks are back in their familiar stance of teetering on the edge of a fifth year without a postseason since 2015.
Next game
The Gamecocks host North Florida at 6:30 p.m. on April 22.
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