Resume Check: Looking ahead to South Carolina baseball's next opponent, The Citadel Bulldogs
In what was a microcosm of the past month on the diamond, South Carolina baseball lost three excruciating games to Texas A&M over the weekend; one was an extra-innings heartbreak, another was an unfathomable 17-0 blowout, while the finale was one of the worst choke jobs in the history of the program. When the dust settled, the Gamecocks moved to 20-17 overall this season and 2-13 in SEC play.
With only a miraculous turnaround able to push USC into the postseason, every game feels like a “must-win” moving forward. South Carolina’s next contest will be at home against The Citadel Bulldogs, a team the Gamecocks beat earlier this year.
Resume Check: The Citadel Bulldogs
Record: 19-17 (4-5 in SoCon)
D1Baseball Ranking: N/A
Last Week: 1-2 series loss to Samford in Birmingham
Previous Meeting: 9-1 South Carolina win in Charleston earlier during 2025 season
Russ Triplett has improved The Citadel in his first year with the program. The Bulldogs already have more conference wins (4) than they had all year a season ago (3). The overachieving team from Charleston earned second-to-last projections from the Southern Conference coaches but has been much better than that. While they aren’t a juggernaut, things look much rosier than the losing record and 3-18 mark in conference play the team had to endure last season.
The 2025 Bulldogs have won on the backs of their pitching staff. George Derrick Floyd has been a battler on the mound, maintaining an ERA below 4.00 despite not having strikeout stuff. Chandler Anderson has a similar story. The team’s best starter, lefty Will Holmes, has missed the last month with an injury. Several bullpen arms have been good, most notably Maddox Webb, a sophomore righty with 44 strikeouts in 31.1 innings pitched.
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The pitching has been good enough to win games, but the offense has been bad for Triplett’s team.
So far this season, The Citadel has hit only 11 home runs, and just one player has a slugging percentage over .400. As a team, the Bulldogs have nearly double the number of strikeouts (271) as they do walks (140). When they do get on base, Citadel baserunners are aggressive. Base stealers in blue and white have been successful 63 times in 81 attempts.
South Carolina baseball coach Paul Mainieri hasn’t revealed his plan for starting pitching for the mid-week or next weekend. Last series, Jake McCoy, Matthew Becker, and Dylan Eskew got the starts against Texas A&M. Jarvis Evans piggybacked off of Eskew’s start. None of them would seem likely to start on Tuesday. Brandon Stone, Jackson Soucie, and Tyler Pitzer have started multiple mid-week contests this season, and none of them pitched against the Aggies.
The South Carolina Gamecocks and The Citadel Bulldogs have their first pitch scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening. The game will not broadcast on traditional television, but SEC Network+ will stream the contest. Carolina won the first matchup between the in-state foes 9-1 in Charleston.
