Ethan Petry crushes grand slam to extend South Carolina's lead over LSU

The brightest lights aren’t too big for true freshman 3B Ethan Petry, who belted a grand slam for No. 6 South Carolina against No. 1 LSU Thursday night in front of a packed crowd at Founders Park.

Petry, who has earned SEC Freshman of the Week honors already this year, took an inside pitch across the yard to give Carolina a 7-1 edge over the top-ranked Tigers. Dylan Brewer would follow up with the next at-bat with another home run to add another run to the board.

Check out the game-shifting moment below, featuring an excited Petry and a raucus Gamecock crowd.

Ethan Petry’s new most impressive homerun of the season, comes in the form of a grandslam to put the #6 Cocks up 7-1 over #1 LSU

pic.twitter.com/VDmKdbVatV

— Stephen Schoch (@bigdonkey47) April 7, 2023

See if Carolina can hold on to its lead in the series opener live on ESPN+. Thursday’s game is the first of three games between South Carolina and LSU, which will culminate in a Friday double-header beginning at Noon ET.

More on Ethan Petry

Petry was made for moments like the one he created against LSU on Thursday.

Before joining the Gamecock baseball program over the offseason, he attended Cypress Creek High School in Orlando, where he earned Sunshine Athletic Conference Player of the Year honors in 2022 and was named to the High School All-American Game.

He batted an impressive .402 with 80 runs scored, 29 doubles, three triples, 12 home runs, 80 RBI and a 1.211 OPS and stole 46 bases (32 as a senior) throughout his high school career at Cypress Creek. Petry’s efforts on the diamond earned him a No. 31 overall rating in the class of 2022 by Perfect Game. He was also rated as the No. 230 prospect in the 2022 MLB Draft by MLB.com.

Since the season began, his bat has been on hire. In 28 games played, Petry is batting a whopping .439 with a 1.337 OPS, .841 SLG% and and OB% of 496 — all of which lead the No. 6 Gamecocks. His 47 hits, 42 RBIs and 13 home runs coming into the LSU series isn’t a fluke.

“He’s a great player. He works extremely hard and he’s a big-time team guy and he just wants to win. You see what he can do for our lineup,” South Carolina head coach Mark Kingston said. “He can really stretch our lineup. When you have that kind of hitter in the eight-hole it gives you optimism.” 

All signs point toward Petry being the next big thing in Columbia, and Thursday night only pushed that narrative further.