Gamecocks extending arms comes back to bite them in series-opening loss

Because of pitching depth issues, the Gamecocks are having to extend arms longer than they would like, and Saturday it came back to bite them.

Twice South Carolina tried to extend arms and twice Texas was able to pad its lead, once in the fifth off Noah Hall and another late against Aidan Hunter as Texas won the series opener 9-5 Saturday afternoon.

“The issue we’re running into right now is we’re having to ask guys to throw one more inning than we should and they’re capable of throwing right now,” Kingston said “[Hall] gave us everything he had, Aidan Hunter, again, two zeros and then we tried to sneak one more inning out of him and it caught up to him. At some point, we won’t have to do that and that’s when we’re going to really be able to take off.”

The Gamecocks’ losing streak is now up to five straight games after Saturday’s series-opening loss despite similar offensive numbers.

South Carolina (7-6) put up 11 hits but Texas’s 14 hits—three homers—were enough to secure the win.

“Obviously that’s a real good team in the other dugout, but I felt for most of that game it went back and forth and the teams battled each other hard,” Mark Kingston said. “Got away from us late there with that home run but I was proud of the effort.”

South Carolina jumped out to an early lead, plating three runs in the first inning off starter Pete Hansen, who entered the game having given up just one run in three starts.

The Gamecocks were aggressive early and ultimately put up all five of their runs against the lefty and nine of their 11 hits.

“That’s one of the top pitchers in the country when you’re a Friday night guy on the number one team I think that speaks volumes,” Kingston said. “He had given up one earned run all year and we got five off him today, so he’s really good but I thought we did about as good as you can ask against a guy that caliber.”

The first of the homers came from Ivan Melendez in the first inning. Melendez’s home run was a no-doubter off the batter’s eye in center that scored two and gave Texas the early lead.

The second came as South Carolina was down just a run with Trey Faltine launching a two-run shot in the fifth inning to pad the Longhorns’ lead.

The Gamecocks were able to respond to Faltine’s homer in the bottom half of the fifth with one of their own. Brandt Belk hit a solo shot to right, his first of the season, and cut the Longhorns lead to 7-5.

Belk had a phenomenal day at the plate. He led the Gamecocks with four hits in five at bats.

“It feels good. I started getting back in my groove last weekend, just didn’t have a lot of things that fell for me,” Belk said. “Today, I kind of got some luck going my way, swing started to feel great. We’re starting to come together as an offense as a whole and that’s really exciting for us.”

South Carolina couldn’t recover as Texas cruised to the four-run win with South Carolina needing to sweep a 16-inning doubleheader to take the series over the top-ranked team in the country.

Kingston said Will Sanders, the Gamecocks’ typical game one starter, will “most likely” start the seven-inning game tomorrow.

“We have to use our resources and fill innings right now, and it just felt like with how many innings we have to play tomorrow,” he said. “Will is clearly our biggest innings eater right now–so we just felt we had to throw him on the doubleheader day.”