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SEC Tournament: South Carolina powers past Alabama, advances to double-elimination stage

Andrew Olson

By Andrew Olson

Published:

South Carolina erased an early deficit with a 6-run inning and never looked back. The 10-seed Gamecocks defeated 7-seed Alabama 10-5 in the opening round of the SEC Tournament, advancing to take on 2-seed Arkansas on Wednesday.

Alabama broke the scoring ice in the bottom of the 1st inning, taking a 1-0 lead. The Crimson Tide added 2 more runs in the bottom of the 2nd, making it 3-0.

South Carolina’s bats got going in the top of the 3rd inning.

Gavin Casas led off the inning with a solo home run, cutting the lead to 3-1. Ethan Petry added a 1-out solo shot to make it a 3-2 game.

UA changed pitchers, but the move did not slow down the USC bats.

With 1 on and 1 out, Cole Messina singled to left. Kennedy Jones walked to load the bases with 2 outs. Dalton Reeves gave the Gamecocks a lead with a grand slam to right field, making it a 6-3 ball game.


Alabama was blanked in the bottom half of the 3rd, but managed 2 runs in the bottom of the 4th to cut it to 6-5.

South Carolina turned to Chris Veach out of the bullpen in the bottom of the 4th. He allowed his inherited runners to score, but from the 5th inning forward, Veach put 0s on the board.

The Gamecocks added 4 insurance runs over the final 5 innings to give Veach some breathing room. He went the distance, helping South Carolina save some arms for the rest of the tourney.

Veach’s final line was 5.2 IP, 3 H, 6 K. In his 67-pitch appearance, Veach did not issue any walks and was not charged with any runs.

Gamecocks boost NCAA Tournament resume

South Carolina entered Tuesday’s game on a 6-game losing skid, but meeting recent requirements to make the NCAA Tournament. The Gamecocks were already No. 19 in RPI and had 13 regular-season SEC wins.

Considering that five teams had 13 regular-season SEC wins with a top-30 RPI, there was some chatter that there might be more teams than at-large bids available for the conference. Six other SEC teams are solidly in the field of 64, and the SEC has never received more than 10 total bids.

Alabama is also one of the five teams in the 13-win club. The Crimson Tide entered Tuesday’s game with the No. 18 RPI. LSU moved up to No. 25 in RPI after picking up a 9-1 win over Georgia.

The two remaining 13/30 teams play in the SEC Tournament’s next game. Florida and Vanderbilt face off for the chance to play 1-seed Tennessee in the double-elimination stage.

Andrew Olson

Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.

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