South Carolina Baseball: Gamecocks rising in rankings after impressive opening sweep

South Carolina baseball fans had to be happy with the way their favorite team played this weekend. The opening 3-game series against Miami (OH) was a dominant showing from the home team as USC won by a combined score of 30-5 in the three games and capped off the weekend with a combined no-hitter and 10-run rule beatdown.

As evidenced by the 30 runs in just 22 offensive innings, the bats were good, and they managed to bring that many runs across the plate without the benefit of a lot of home runs. Ethan Petry's 2-bomb game in game 2 marked the only dingers of the series for either team.

The starting pitching was really good for the Gamecocks, as well, as Eli Jones and Dylan Eskew combined to give up just 4 hits in 11 innings in their two wins as starting pitchers. Roman Kimball started game 3 and was piggy-backed by Ty Good, and the duo pitched the first four innings of the team's combined no-hitter.

The impressive showing from Mark Kingston's team propelled them forward a bit in the latest rankings.

According to D1Baseball, the Gamecocks are the 21st-best team in college baseball (up from #25 in the preseason poll).

Perfect Game moved South Carolina baseball up from #13 to #12 in their rankings.

The Gamecocks moved up 2 spots from 11th to 9th in College Baseball Central's poll.

The NCWBA ranked the Gamecocks 16th, one spot lower than their preseason ranking.

USA Today slotted Carolina in as the 21st-ranked team in their preseason poll, but the outlet does not update their rankings until after week 2 of the regular season.

Baseball America (12th) is the only major poll that updated but still kept USC in the same spot as their preseason rankings.

Averaging all of the poll changes together, the Gamecocks went up by 1 aggregate spot (+6 total spots divided by 6 rankings).

Expected to be heavy favorites in each of their next 6th games, South Carolina baseball will begin its rivalry series against the Clemson Tigers on March 1st with one game at Founders Park, one game at Doug Kingsmore Stadium, and one game at Segra Park. A clearer picture of the college baseball rankings (and the Gamecocks' place in those rankings) will arrive after that crucial third weekend of the season.