The Gamecocks just come over a brutal weekend in Texas where they went seeking to remain perfect on the season. That was the only thing that didn’t happen.
For the first time South Carolina has to answer the question of “how do they respond?” Coach Kingston and his crew for the first time all season just couldn’t come through with an answer and for the first time this season hear the doubts ringing about this regional quality team.
The team looks to take on the (5-8) Davidson Wildcats, and bounce back from a tough weekend in Austin.
Hitting
Regardless of the score, the Gamecock bats were making music this past weekend, recording 21 hits on the weekend.
Brady Allen added 4 hits to his collection on the season, Wes Clarke had yet another home run, Wimmer went 4-4 on the Sunday game, and George Callil finally got comfortable with a bat and recorded 3 hits on the weekend.
The problem lies with the uncapitalizing on these hits, out of 21 hits the gamecocks only landed home 6 runs, one of those being a Wes Clarke solo shot.
The Gamecocks stranded 25 base runners on the weekend, the sum that up before this weekend they had stranded 103 total, that’s an average of 9 per game. Whereas this weekend on Sunday left 13 on base.
When you’re hitting .142 on the season and 89 RBI’s gaining multiple 5 run innings, and have guys hitting home runs more often that striking out this stat gets kind of over casted, but when you play a top 25 team these types of things get exposed.
As far as this game against Davidson, have no fear, the RHP Jake Biderman has an ERA of 9.00. Jake has given up 12 hits and no doubt will give up more tonight.
Also, a thing to note is that the Texas field is a solid 400 feet from home to centerfield, needless to say the boys will be thrilled to be back at Founders Park where its 390 at dead center.
Pitching
Will Sanders has been announced to get the start and is looking for redemption like most of the team. Will gave up 3 earned runs on 4 hits in 2 appearances this past weekend and had no strikeout to even the boards out.
Sanders is definitely a solid core of the pitching staff for Coach Kingston and this past weekend was just not his best work.
In the game of baseball, you notice people work on averages, earned run average, hitting average, it’s because one game doesn’t define you, your overall performance does. With Will his season average ERA is 2.79 which is on the lower half of the team and all pitchers in the nation.
I see Will Sanders having yet another fantastic day and really setting the tempo to head into SEC play this weekend against VANDY.
Overall Thoughts
This past weekend gave the team a lot of things to work on. Cleaning up the errors, getting base runners’ home, and keeping focus and not giving up when you’re down.
The Gamecocks will face a brutal SEC schedule and at many times will be down, but this is baseball and playing your game at your speed is what has them sitting at 11-3 on the season.
These guys can hang with anyone and are looking to make an example of Davidson tonight to get back on track to head to Tennessee to face Vanderbilt this weekend.