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South Carolina baseball: losing streak hits four in walk-off loss to The Citadel

On3 imageby:Collyn Taylor•03/22/22•

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Mark Kingston (Photo by Katie Dugan)

South Carolina is in the midst of another four-game losing streak just 20 games into the year.

The Gamecocks blew a late two-run lead Tuesday on the road at the Citadel, giving up two runs in the ninth as the Bulldogs walked them off 4-3.

After pitching was a struggle early in the season, it was another tough offensive performance and the rough ninth inning leading to Tuesday’s defeat.

“It’s frustrating. You tip your cap to Citadel. They played a great game tonight. Tony (Skole’s) done a great job with that program,” Mark Kingston said. “They play really hard for him. It’s great to see cause he’s a great coach. Look, we had a chance to win it there at the end and didn’t close it out.”

The Gamecocks did out-hit the Citadel by one, picking up seven total hits but struggled again with runners on base. South Carolina stranded 10 runners. The Gamecocks couldn’t come up with a timely hit despite plenty of opportunities to bust the game open.

South Carolina got runs in the first and second inning but plated just one more the rest of the game, scoring on a passed ball in the sixth inning. The Bulldogs scored the final three runs of the game.

“They just kept us off balance just enough,” Kingston said. “I thought we took good at-bats but left too many guys on base.”

Clinging to a one-run lead in the ninth, the Gamecocks opted to take Cade Austin—who was only at 20 pitches through two scoreless innings—out of the game in favor of Michael Braswell.

Braswell put the first two runners on base via the walk, one on four pitches the other on five, and then balked the runners up a base.

“(The umpire) said he balked,” Kingston said. “There’s no other explanation other than he balked.”

Three pitches later, the Citadel was celebrating. Noah Mitchell’s RBI single tied the game while Crosby Jones won the game with a single through the right side.

“There was a thought, but Michael Braswell’s been our closer,” Kingston said. “He’s come through every time this year. Cade, we’re going to have to use Cade a lot. We’re going to have to use him in a couple of days. We just couldn’t overuse Cade tonight.”

They did get a quality outing from Aidan Hunter, who scattered three hits and a walk over five innings of one-run baseball. He’d throw 43 of his 67 pitches for strikes in the freshman’s first outing in his hometown.

“Just spotting up my pitches low and letting my defense do the job. They did,” he said. “They did a tremendous job out there.”

The Gamecocks are now 10-10 (0-3 SEC), their worst start under Kingston, and have to play a top-10 Vanderbilt team at home starting Thursday night.

“The message is keep working. We did a lot of things tonight that win a lot of baseball games. We just couldn’t get a big hit when we needed to,” Kingston said. “Other than that, we pitched well enough, got good defense, stole six bases, took quality at-bats. We came up short and couldn’t close it out.”

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