What happened? South Carolina blows 10-run lead as Texas A&M completes sweep

That’s all you can say. What happened?

South Carolina had a 12-2 lead in the sixth inning on Saturday and ended up losing 15-12 as Texas A&M came back with an eight-run rally in the bottom of the ninth. After three excruciating losses this weekend, the Gamecocks (20-17, 2-13 SEC) will now head home as a team that’s been swept three times in SEC play.

Head coach Paul Mainieri was at a loss for words after watching a disaster unfold right in front of his eyes.

“Just brokenhearted for the kids. Played their hearts out,” Mainieri told GamecockCentral. “… It’s hard to win college baseball games.”

The first two games were painful enough for South Carolina, as it lost on a walk-off home run on Thursday. Less than 24 hours later, it was run-ruled in an embarrassing 17-0 loss on Friday. It couldn’t get any worse on Saturday, could it?

But it did. Slowly but surely, thoughts of winning in run-rule fashion slipped away and turned into thoughts of possibly blowing a 10-run lead. And when the ball left Kaeden Kent’s bat, the deed had been done.

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Down by a run with two outs in the ninth, Kent crushed a 2-1 pitch from Caleb Jones and sent it deep into right field for a walk-off grand slam. All eight runs in the inning came from two grand slams. Brendan Sweneey, who gave up six runs in one inning of work, served up the initial one to pinch-hitter Hayden Schott to kick off the Aggies’ final push to try and win the game.

Over the final four innings, the Gamecocks surrendered 13 runs with four different pitchers on the mound. All be told, the pitching staff allowed 40 runs in three games this weekend. That’s five more than their previous high of 35 runs given up in the Arkansas series last month.

Even as the lead continued to dwindle, Mainieri said he didn’t feel any uneasiness in the dugout watching it all go down.

“I felt like our players were playing hard and the pitchers were making good pitches, and we made plays,” he said.

Because of the late-inning collapse, it wasted a promising afternoon for the offense. After falling behind 2-0 in the early going, South Carolina scored 11 runs between the fifth and sixth innings. Evan Stone and Ethan Petry both had big days with two hits and three RBI apiece. Henry Kaczmar and Jordan Carrion also drove in a pair of runs, coming up with big at-bats during this stretch.

But it was all for naught. 12 runs on nine hits weren’t enough. Even though the Gamecocks left the bases loaded with one out in the ninth, it shouldn’t have mattered by that point. They went 6-for-13 (.462) with runners in scoring position, better than anyone could have wanted after being shut out on Friday.

“We were one hit away from clinching it, I think,” Mainieri said. “We had the bases loaded, one out in the top of the ninth inning, and couldn’t score. Got to do what it takes. We just came up a bit short.”

And now, a long flight back to Columbia awaits the team as their season-long struggle to win games in the SEC moves along. If there wasn’t a nail in the coffin of any fleeting postseason hopes yet, this weekend was it.

“Well, you can’t do anything about yesterday, you know?” Mainieri said. “So you just got to get them ready and go play them play Tuesday.”

Up next: South Carolina will begin a five-game home stand on Tuesday against The Citadel. First pitch is at 6:30 p.m. on SEC Network Plus.

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