3 questions South Carolina needs to answer vs. Kentucky this weekend
There’s still a few weeks to go in the regular season, but the time is now for South Carolina baseball. The No. 24 Gamecocks will open a critical three-game series against No. 4 Kentucky, where they can make a big statement.
Before things gets going on Friday, here are three questions South Carolina needs to answer in this series.
Which direction is this team going?
It’s been an up and down year for the Gamecocks, but they still are in a good spot for the postseason. They’re 9-9 in SEC play, which is tied for fourth in the SEC East standings.
As of right now, they’re projected to be the No. 15 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament and host a regional. For reference, this is where they finished last year and ended up making it to a Super Regional.
Speaking of last year, South Carolina finished 38-17 in the regular season with a 16-13 conference record. So while it’s easy to write off this team and think they don’t have a chance, that couldn’t be further from the truth. They really do control their fate from this point on.
If the Gamecocks can win the series or sweep Kentucky, they will definitely move up in the rankings and projections. To a degree, they could also start to solidify its case to host for the tournament.
Up to this point, the Gamecocks have dropped four of their first six SEC series. Every weekend has been tough, especially being pinned against some of the best teams in the country. With only four weekends to go, they really need to start taking some of these upcoming series to prove where they stand.
And this weekend isn’t the end-all, be-all if they don’t win the series, but it would go a long way if they were able to get the job done.
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Will South Carolina finally have its solidified weekend rotation?
For much of this season, the starting rotation has seemingly been different almost every weekend. Outside of Eli Jones, who has been the usual Friday starter, it’s been a carousel of different arms going in and out on Saturdays and Sundays.
But this past weekend against Arkansas, the Gamecocks actually got good outings from all three starting pitchers. While Roman Kimball didn’t last long before leaving with a thumb issue last Friday, he was pitching very well against a tough Razorbacks lineup. Jones didn’t go super long either, but he gave the offense a chance to win the game, which they did. And Dylan Eskew put together his best start of the year in the series finale.
So there’s definitely a lot of potential for this trio of pitchers. Now, who’s to say Mark Kingston doesn’t shuffle the rotation again for this upcoming series. But it would be hard to believe it’s not some combination of Kimball-Jones-Eskew again.
And if all three can do better than they did last weekend, this might end up being the weekend rotation from here on out.
Kingston did recently say that “we’re going to continue to experiment until we feel like we have it 100 percent.” And he wants this figured out by the time the games become do or die. But this might be the weekend where this question finally gets answered.
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Can this offense keep it going and have a stronger weekend?
It’s safe to say South Carolina’s offense has looked a lot better the past few weekends. While hitting with runners in scoring position has been an issue, the bats have been doing enough to win games.
At the same time, there’s still some guys who have been struggling. And that’s just part of the game. Everyone isn’t going to be hitting well from time to time. But it’s going to be important for them to break out of their slumps sooner rather than later.
One player who could really use a big weekend would have to be Ethan Petry. While he’s been the team’s leading hitter for much of this year, he went 0-for-12 against Arkansas with six strikeouts. He just looked out of sync and defeated each time he came up to bat.
Kingston has spoke about a bit this year. When the All-American bats like Petry and Cole Messina swing well, the rest of the lineup seems to follow suit. If those guys can get back to their old selves against the Wildcats, it will go a long way in winning games this weekend.
