The impact errors had in South Carolina’s loss to LSU Thursday in SEC Tournament
South Carolina baseball fell 11-10 Thursday night to LSU in a double-elimination game in the SEC Tournament.
While South Carolina did finish with just one less hit than LSU, one statistic that had a noticeable impact on the result of the game: errors.
The Gamecocks finished the game with four errors compared to none made by LSU in the game.
“I mean that was clearly the difference in the game. They made no errors, we made four,” head coach Mark Kingston said.
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The two most impactful errors South Carolina committed occurred in the top of the eighth inning. The first error came on a one-out throw from third baseman Talmadge LeCroy.
After LSU catcher Alex Milazzo hit a routine ground ball to LeCroy, LeCroy made the error with a low throw from third base over to first base where the ball bounced off the ground to first baseman Gavin Casas.
The missed opportunity to collect two outs with no runners on base proved to be costly to South Carolina. After the first error occurred, LSU drew two walks with a Tommy White fly out in between to put runners on the corners with two outs. Instead of getting the final out of the inning after the first walk, the Tigers were still alive.
But the second error was perhaps more impactful on the result of the game.
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With runners on the corners and two outs, Josh Pearson came up to plate. On a 1-0 pitch, Pearson hit a hard ground ball to first baseman Gavin Casas. Casas missed the ground ball as the ball rolled through his legs and into the outfield.
“The ball to Gavin, it was almost like a cue ball, and he did everything he could to get down and get in front of him, and it snuck through him,” Kingston said.
Instead of getting out of a two-on, two-out jam without giving up a run and going to the ninth inning with a 10-7 lead, the fielding error by Casas drove in two more runs for LSU and cut South Carolina’s lead from three to one.
“Look, it was a tough play. It was unfortunate. Nothing you can do about it now,” Kingston said.
In the ninth inning, LSU added three hits to their total of 13 and scored two runs to take a 11-10 lead courtesy of former Gamecock Michael Braswell III’s game-winning RBI single.
