Mark Kingston happy with South Carolina's effort despite loss to Tennessee
No. 24 South Carolina did not have a good opening outings in their series in Knoxville this weekend against No. 1 Tennessee with a 9-3 loss. However, it was a fine-enough effort from the Gamecocks besides in one aspect to Mark Kingston.
Kingston opened up his postgame press conference by explaining the six-run defeat to the top-ranked Volunteers on Thursday. He felt like both teams played a similar game but just one of them hit home runs in order to create a lead.
“How’d it get away from us? They started hitting some homers. That’s how it got away from us,” said Kingston.
“I know the score doesn’t indicate it but I thought we played pretty well,” Kingston said. “I mean the defenses both played well with no errors. They had nine hits, we had eight. But they ran the ball out of the ballpark today, a lot like Georgia did last week, and that was the difference.”
Both teams opened with home runs with one for South Carolina’s Ethan Petry and one for Tennessee’s Christian Moore. That created a 1-1 tie after the first inning. However, the Volunteers would gone on to hit three more with another from Moore in the third along with a three-run one from Kavares Tears later in that inning and a two-run one from Dylan Dreiling in the seventh.
Cole Messina did hit a solo shot to score a run for the Gamecocks in the sixth. Dalton Reeves also hit a single to get Messina home in the eighth. However, they obviously weren’t enough to make up for the 7-0 advantage that Tennessee made in the third and seventh.
As Kingston referenced, something similar happened in their sweep loss during a series against No. 15 Georgia last weekend. The Gamecocks did scored 21 runs themselves in the trio of games. It’s just that they also allowed 39 to the Bulldogs as they scored no less than 11 in any contest. Those came from 11 home runs, including five on Thursday and four on Saturday, for a total of 27 runs. Georgia outpaced South Carolina with them in the opener and beat them early with the two on Friday. They then came back with a late pair, one grand slam and one worth three runs, to complete the sweep.
Letting balls behind the fence has cost South Carolina a lot over this four-game losing streak to end their season in the league. No longer costing themselves in bunches like that will go a long way in potentially coming back to win their final series, if not at least take one game at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.