South Carolina Baseball: After embarrassing sweep, Gamecocks plummet in rankings

After several weeks of rising in the national rankings, the South Carolina baseball team plummeted in the polls this week following their embarrassing sweep at the hands of the rival Georgia Bulldogs.

Despite both teams entering the series with the same SEC record and despite the game being played at Founders Park in Columbia, the Gamecocks got smacked around by the Bulldogs. It was Carolina's first home sweep loss since 2019 and Georgia's first road series win in conference play since 2022.

Mark Kingston's team was on the "right side" of the Regional hosting line heading into the weekend, but with the poor showing and a tough road series upcoming against the #1-ranked Tennessee Volunteers, USC has some work to do to ensure their place in the NCAA Tournament altogether.

With four or five of the top-5 in most polls (and 7 of the top-10) all coming from the Gamecocks' schedule, Carolina's strength of schedule will keep them in the postseason conversation for now, but the vibes aren't great in Columbia following a 1-3 week heading into, arguably, the toughest series of the year and an SEC Tournament that always seems to be a house of horrors for the Gamecocks.

This week's national rankings reflect the steep drop for South Carolina baseball as they fell all the way out of some polls and nearly out of the others.

D1Baseball allowed the Gamecocks to stay just inside the top-25, ranking them at #24 after slotting them in at #13 last week.

Perfect Game kicked Carolina to the curb in their rankings, dropping them from 16th to unranked in just a week.

Another national outlet removed South Carolina baseball from their weekly top-25 as the Gamecocks are nowhere to be found in Baseball America's rankings.

USA Today elected to keep the Gamecocks inside their updated rankings, putting Carolina at #23 in the poll, a 9-spot fall.

The NCBWA matched the D1Baseball ranking, slotting South Carolina in at #24 in their weekly poll, as well, marking the biggest drop of 11 spots.

The most optimistic group about the Gamecocks for most of the season has been College Baseball Central, but the outlet had not published their updated top-25 at the time of this writing.

With the road trip to Knoxville this weekend, South Carolina baseball will be fighting to keep themselves ranked and in the NCAA Tournament picture. With no mid-week opponent and the SEC Tournament starting next Tuesday, the series against Tennessee will begin on Thursday.

Thursday's game 1 is slated for a 6:30 PM EST first pitch. The second game on Friday will also begin at 6:30 PM EST at Lindsey Nelson Stadium. The series finale on Saturday gets the early afternoon 1:00 PM EST time slot. All three games currently are set to be streamed on SEC Network+ on the ESPN app.