Beverly Smith: South Carolina softball run shows it can 'compete with any team in the country'
Beverley Smith has seen her team all season and knows what this iteration of South Carolina softball is all about.
So this Gamecocks’ run, which ended Saturday in the SEC Tournament championship game, didn’t validate much for her. It was more about showing the outside world what this team can do.
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“I could not be more proud of the South Carolina softball team and the way we performed here this week,” Smith told GamecockCentral Saturday postgame. “Our players know we can compete with any team in the country and have an expectation to win. I think for me, that’s what I leave this tournament with.”
South Carolina lived this week with a flair for the dramatic, living and dying in close games for four straight days.
There was the extra-inning win over Texas A&M in eight innings, followed by yet another extra-inning win over No. 13 Georgia.
The dream run continued Friday night with South Carolina, down to its final out, using a two-run homer from Jordan Fabian to beat a top-20 Auburn team and set up a title tilt against Tennessee.
Three games, three one-run wins with two in extra innings and one a late-inning comeback against some of the best teams in the country. It was an undoubtedly validating week in Fayetteville for a team gearing up for the postseason.
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“It’s more validating for spectators. We’ve known our potential and our heart and our degree of ball.I think it’s more validating for those watching from the outside,” Fabian said. “Absolutely, we’re moving in the right direction right now.”
The Gamecocks did it with pitching and an offense doing just enough, holding opponents to two runs over three games en route to the championship and finding ways to scrap across runs.
It was even like that in the title game with one bases loaded, bloop single just fair the deciding moment in the game. South Carolina held a vaunted Tennessee team to just three runs with ace Donnie Gobourne striking out four in three scoreless innings.
“Four wins? It’s big, especially coming in and playing teams we’ve already played,” Gobourne said. “They’ve seen our best stuff. Coming in and getting four wins is the start of our peak.”
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South Carolina made big play after big play, a trait good postseason teams seem to rely on heavily.
“For me, it was making the big play. We talk about the difference in the game sometimes,” Smith said. “Players have to step up in big moments and we saw that.”
The Gamecocks now turn their attention to the postseason and will find out their path Sunday night (7 p.m., ESPN2). And it excites Smith to see her team starting to gain some steam with even more win-or-go-home games on the horizon.
“For me, it fills me up to see us playing our best ball here at the end of the year. I said earlier this team made a big commitment at the beginngin of the season. They’re united, they’re playing together,” Smith said.
“They talked at the beginning of the season about wanting to be a gritty team. I think that showed this weekend, too. For the things we emphasized and talked about all season, for them to be rewared for it at the end of the season is really special. I think it should be rocket fuel heading into the postseason.”
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South Carolina takes this momentum into the regional round trying to get to a Super Regional for the first time since 2018 and first Women’s College World Series since 1997.
“I think we really took the country by surprise. It’s not a surprise to us. We expected to win. It was a lot of fun, a lot of close games,” Fabian said. “We put ourselves in position to have good games. It was a lot of fun.”
