Ray Tanner couldn’t have phrased it any better when he said his team has used it’s “mulligan”. East Carolina forced a Monday winner take all game by knocking off South Carolina 8-6 at Clark-LeClair Stadium on Sunday night. It’s not the first time this season the Gamecocks’ backs have been against the proverbial wall, as the 2009 season hangs in the balance.
What seems like ages ago, USC dropped three straight to Florida and fell to fourth place in the Southeastern Conference East Division. They were in eighth place overall and far from assured of a postseason berth.
That’s when the Gamecocks put together a nice little run to close out the season and to get where they are today.
The first two games of the Greenville, N.C. were easy – pitchers pitched well, hitters hit and all was hunky-dory in Gamecock land.
That came to a screeching halt when a ninth inning rally fell short Sunday night. One more loss and the season is over.
“If you had asked our guys three or four weeks ago ‘Hey, we’re going to be on the road, we’re going to be in Greenville, but it’s a one game shootout, would you sign for it?’ I think you’d have a lot of checks,” Tanner said.
Four weeks ago that may have been true, but this team wants more. The mindset has been a bit different heading into the postseason this year as opposed to last, at least according to junior Blake Cooper.
“Last year, we had some big name guys and we looked towards them to lead us because we always had,” Cooper said heading into the weekend. “This year, we have a bunch of guys who have put up numbers. I think, as a whole, our team is better. We can put it all together and we can be good.”
This team is doing what they can to be good. See game one and game two as perfect evidence. However, one more win is required for this team to keep progressing and to keep proving the national pundits, who many proclaimed the Gamecocks would fall flat this season, wrong.
“We’re upbeat, we have another game,” senior Andrew Crisp said. “We obviously would have loved to take this one but it’s baseball and you’re not going to win all the time. Hopefully you put the right guys out there, make the right pitches, and get hits at timely times. Tomorrow, we’re going to go out there and play hard, play smart, and do the things we’ve done to get here.”
One game, one winner. One team goes home while the other will take their talents to Chapel Hill, N.C. next weekend to face UNC, who won their regional by defeating Kansas on Sunday night.
“We’re even again, and this is what it’s all about. I know their guys will be ready to go, our guys will be ready to go, and the place will be jumping,” Tanner said.
The Gamecocks had to like their situation going into the night as the Pirates played two doubleheaders in two days to force game seven. With a pitching staff that still has plenty of healthy arms ready to go, Tanner still has reason for optimism.
But facing the host team who has all the confidence in the world, surely Tanner and company would like to be back in Columbia right now prepping to travel to Tar Heel land in a few days.
“We had a mulligan, we used it and now we’re going to have to play very, very well tomorrow night,” Tanner said.
One game, one winner. May the best team advance.
Wishing Mack were at the bat
Tanner doesn’t make mistakes very often but he was kicking himself following the loss on Sunday. With junior DeAngelo Mack’s spot due up, Tanner’s hand was forced as he forfeited the designated hitter when Adam Matthews went to left field.
Mack has been suffering from shin splints for the better part of three weeks and was in an inordinate amount of pain in the late innings. Reliever Steven Neff was scheduled to bat in Mack’s spot so Tanner elected to go with junior Jeff Jones, who had just two hits in the month of May.
“I had lifted D-Mack,” Tanner explained. “He had those shin splints and I saw him hobble out there in the ninth and I lifted him. It was a mistake on my part.”
The Airport High School product has struggled this postseason as the wear and tear on his lower leg has increased. However, he put together a few good at-bats against ECU drilling a double and having a homerun sail just foul on him in his third at-bat.
“I would love to have that one back.”
While Jones was the choice, sophomore Parker Bangs wasn’t even an option. The sophomore, who is hitting .500 in the last three weeks, has struggled too often against right-handed pitchers for Tanner to consider him.
Another reason Bangs was unavailable with the stick is he was going out to the mound had the game been tied.
“No,” Tanner said bluntly when asked if he considered Bangs to hit. “His numbers are not really good against right-handers. I actually had him up in the bullpen had we gotten another hit there to tie it up. He’s had a lot of success against lefties, not so much against righties.”
Talk is cheap, at least in this case
The numbers look bad for Nolan Belcher in his six and one third innings against East Carolina, but it was just a couple of mistakes that caused the lion’s share of the problems. Red-hot Kyle Roller crushed a three-run homerun in the first but Belcher settled down.
The freshman was solid working a few easy innings and working around some base runners until the top of the seventh.
With the bases loaded – a double, walk, and hit by pitch – pitching coach Mark Calvi came out to the mound to talk to his lefty.
“He just came out there to give me a little encouragement,” Belcher said.
“He told me to make a pitch and obviously I didn’t make that pitch. It wasn’t a good pitch and he crushed it,” Belcher said.
That doubled the earned runs Belcher allowed from four to eight and put the Gamecocks in deep hole – one they couldn’t quite dig themselves out of.
By John Whittle
ThBigSpur.com
