South Carolina digs deep hole in series-opening loss to Tennessee

As the ball left Ethan Petry’s bat and sailed deep into left field, South Carolina found itself with a first-inning lead over the top-ranked team in the country. Even though times had been tough, maybe this would be the moment where the tide turned.

But there’s a reason why the Gamecocks were off to a 1-5 start in SEC play and had lost their last four games. It only took one misplay in the following inning for the momentum in the game to shift the other way.

The Gamecocks fell into an early eight-run hole and suffered an 11-7 loss to No. 1 Tennessee in Friday’s series opener. They’ve now lost five straight games.

“I want to say it’s been a long time since I coached a game where we lost by four runs, but it didn’t feel like you lost by four runs,” head coach Paul Mainieri said.

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After Petry’s two-run homer gave South Carolina (17-10, 1-6 SEC) a quick 2-1 lead, the Vols broke out for five runs in the second. The rally started when Jordan Carrion couldn’t cleanly field a groundball hit right to him on what looked to be a potential double play.

A long fly out two batters later could’ve been a scoreless frame for left-hander Jake McCoy. But one mistake made to Tennessee’s high-power offense opened the floodgates for trouble. The five runs came on four hits, but all were unearned on McCoy’s final line as he threw 37 pitches in the inning.

McCoy pitched into the fifth but couldn’t record an out as he surrendered eight runs, three earned, while throwing 99 pitches. He struck out three and also walked three in his first Friday start of the year.

“I thought Jake McCoy pitched well tonight,” Mainieri said. “His numbers are not indicative of the way he pitched, and that’s been the case with a couple of his outings.”

Tennessee plated four more runs in the fifth, two of which were charged to Tyler Pitzer, who came in after McCoy put two runners on via free passes. After that, though, Caleb Jones pitched the rest of the way and limited the damage.

In his first season with the program after transferring from Winthrop, Jones had only made one appearance before this week. But after a scoreless inning against North Carolina on Tuesday, the right-hander pitched four innings of one-run ball. He retired the first 11 hitters of his outing before allowing a triple in the ninth that led to a sacrifice fly. He struck out two without a walk over 35 pitches.

“I feel great. I mean, I’m feeling the best I’ve ever felt in my four years,” Jones said. “I’m just going to keep going out there and try to give us a chance to win.”

Despite his early error, Carrion made up for it with a solid game at the plate as he went 4-for-4 with an RBI single in the sixth to cut the deficit down to six. Henry Kaczmar followed suit with a single that dropped into left to bring home another run in the inning. Kaczmar also delivered a two-run homer in the ninth to finish 2-for-4.

“I thought he played a great game,” Mainieri said. “Even though he had a couple of strikeouts, I’ll take that from him every day.”

The Gamecocks got plenty of production from their top hitters as Nathan Hall, Petry, Carrion and Kaczmar combined for 12 hits in 18 at-bats. The rest of the lineup, however, went 1-for-21 at the plate. As a team, South Carolina struck out 14 times and walked twice.

Up next: South Carolina will look to even the series up in game two on Saturday. First pitch is at 4 p.m. on SEC Network Plus. Jarvis Evans Jr. (3-0, 3.42 ERA) will get the start on the mound.

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