South Carolina baseball: Gamecocks drop series to top ranked Arkansas

South Carolina baseball lost its 2nd SEC series of the year.

The South Carolina baseball team entered the weekend in a tie for third place in the Southeastern Conference standings, winning 10 of their first 15 league matchups. Just a game ahead of the Gamecocks sat top ranked Arkansas, who travelled to Columbia for a huge SEC series with postseason implications on the line.

Mark Kingston’s group had a chance to make a statement and hop into the conversation of national seed relevance, but the offense sputtered in the three-game set, resulting in the team’s second SEC series loss of the season.

The weekend had a wacky setup, as the series began on Thursday night. With bad weather expected to move in on Saturday, the two foes met for a doubleheader on Friday to wrap up the set.

Let’s get into the action and breakdown the performance of a few Gamecocks.

In Thursday’s opener, we saw a pitcher’s duel between Gamecock starter Thomas Farr and the Razorbacks’ Caleb Bolden. Farr threw seven innings, allowing just one run over the game’s first six frames, but a seventh inning homer from Arkansas second baseman Robert Moore broke open what was a 1-1 game. The homer was Moore’s second of the contest.

Arkansas would go on to tack on three more over the final three innings en route to a 6-1 series opening win. Razorback pitching held the Gamecocks to just two hits despite Bolden making his first start in conference play. After 3.1 solid innings, the Razorbacks went to the bullpen and didn’t allow a base knock from the fourth inning on. Closer Kevin Kopps was the most impressive of the bunch, striking out six of the nine batters he faced to end the game. It was the fifth time in six league series that the Gamecocks had lost the opener.

They’d rebound in game two, though, as the bats finally came alive late in another low scoring contest. Arkansas jumped out to a 2-0 lead on a home run and a sacrifice fly, but a huge sixth inning saw the Gamecocks tag Razorback pitching for four runs. They’d add two more in the eight to increase the lead to 6-2, and relievers Andrew Peters and Brett Kerry shut the door on an Arkansas comeback.

Peters threw three scoreless innings to pick up the win, with Kerry getting the game’s last four outs to earn the save. The two combined for six strikeouts, while allowing just one hit.

Unfortunately, the bats couldn’t stay hot in the rubber match as the Gamecocks dropped the second game of the doubleheader by a score of 5-1. For the second game of the series, the Gamecocks mustered just two hits, and never really gave their starting pitcher a chance to win.

Will Sanders threw five innings, allowing four runs on six hits. Julian Bosnic and Daniel Lloyd would finish out the final four frames, surrendering just a single unearned run to cross the plate. Arkansas pitching was better, though, with starter Patrick Wicklander throwing seven innings of one-run ball. Closer Kevin Kopps came in to close things out, striking out all six batters he faced.

The series loss was disappointing, particularly on the offensive side of things. Outside of that four-run sixth inning in game two, the Gamecocks strung together just 10 hits and four runs in 26 innings. The pitching staff did enough to win, particularly in game one, but the lack of production from the bats kept South Carolina from making a statement. What’s worse is that the supposed weakness of the Arkansas team was pitching. Outside of Kopps, their hasn’t really been a dominant, consistent arm on the staff. Kopps certainly looked the part, striking out 12 of the 15 batters he faced, but the rest of the rotation stepped up, too, to keep the Razorbacks on top of the SEC West standings.

STAT OF THE WEEKEND

The Gamecocks hit just .146 as a team in the three-game set while striking out a combined 29 times. That includes two games in which South Carolina’s offense hit below .075.

ON DECK

South Carolina will try to regroup this weekend in another tough SEC matchup. The Gamecocks will host The Citadel in a midweek contest before travelling to Oxford to take on No. 19 Ole Miss.