The South Carolina season has started off well, and the Gamecocks are now 14-3 and ranked 7th in the country. But the majority of the success has come from the pitching staff who has carried the teamso far this season. In fact the team is in the top 15 in the nation in overall ERA and most of those runs of been given up early, then relievers of come in to shut down almost every single team. In fact this pitching staff is only given up three earned runs in the last 50+ innings.
Wednesday night against Penn State, however, was a totally different story. The Gamecocks came alive at the plate with the season-high 15 hits and a season-high 13 runs. Although it was great to see that the heart of the order which includes Max Schrock, Kyle Martin, and Alex Destino, came alive for nine hits and nine RBIs between them, that wasn’t really the best part. The best part was the consistency in the hitting throughout the game and even many of the outs were extremely hard hit balls that just missed being big hits. The other really great part about the other night was the aggressiveness in which they approached the game. There were stolen bases, hit-and-runs, and even a player being thrown out at the plate couldn’t be disappointing because it was great to see them going for it like that.
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A lot of times this type of play becomes contagious and carries over and this couldn’t have come at a better time. Today the Gamecocks start their SEC conference play against Kentucky another really great team is batting .312 on the season and has won 11 in a row on the way to being 13-3 on the season. Even without last years player of the year, this Kentucky offense is very potent and very dangerous and the Gamecocks will need to be able to make sure and support their pitching staff with some offense. That could be a challenge in itself as Kentucky will bring three very strong starters to Columbia this weekend.
Hopefully Wednesday was the start of a new trend for the Gamecocks and if the pitching stays as strong as it’s been they should look pretty good this weekend. The series starts tonight at 7 PM, game two is Saturday at 4 PM, and ends Sunday at 1:30 PM with game three.