Darden solid as Clemson clinches season series over USC

Ethan Darden lowered his ERA to 1.06
with seven shutout innings. (Clemson photo)

No. 7 Clemson clinched a series win over South Carolina with a 5-1 victory at Greenville's Flour Field Saturday afternoon.

Starters Ethan Darden of Clemson and Jake McCoy pitched out of first-inning jams, then gave opposing batters few opportunities after that.

Domininc Listi led off the Tigers' first with and double and took third on a USC error. He was thrown out trying to score on a one-out flyout to Kennedy Jones in medium left field to end the inning.

Nathan Hall led off the Gamecocks' first with a double, and walks to Dalton Mashore and Ethan Petry filled the bases, but Darden retired the next three batters.

"We had an opportunity in the first inning and let them off the hook," said Gamecocks coach Paul Mainieri. "And it came back to bite us."

"The story of the game was Ethan Darden," said Tigers coach Erik Bakich. "Bases loaded,  nobody out in the first inning and he strands all the runners and not allow them to score. 

"He has to get five outs a few innings later, because we make a couple of errors. I mean, he just showed just incredible toughness today," Bakich said. "I'm so proud of him to put us in the position that he put us into clinch the series. It wouldn't have happened without Ethan Darden today.

Darden allowed three hits and struck out six in seven shutout innings.

"I started off a little big rough," Darden said. "The crowd's crazy out here. It's an intense environment, something and not a lot of college teams get experience.

"... I just had to relax and keep objective," he said. "The bases were loaded, nobody out and that's all it was. You can't bring emotions into the game, which is something that we  hammer each and every day."

The Tigers  (9-1) scored two runs in the sixth. Cam Cannarella doubled in Dominic Listi, then scored from second base on Luke Gaffney's groundout.

McCoy finished with 12 strikeouts.

"Today was an unbelievable pitchers' duel  for the first five innings," Bakich said. "A tip of the cap to McCoy. The first time the first two times through the order he punched us out 11 times. Eighteen guys came up to the plate, 11 of them punched out, and he was just getting ahead. It felt like we were in 0-2 counts all the time. Give credit to our guys. They stuck with it."

Darden certainly enjoyed it. "This is what college baseball's about. It's the best rivalry ever."

USC (9-2) pulled within a run in the eighth on Petry's 47th career home run, but Clemson tacked on three insurance runs in the ninth. Jacob Jarrell, Tristan Bissetta and Jarren Purify had RBI.

Gaffney had two of Clemson's six hits. Nathan Hall had two of the five USC safeties.

"The bottom third of our order really hasn't produced much at all," Mainieri said. "Even some of the guys up in the order, have had a little bit of a tough time.

"The last two days have been good pitching, and we're gonna face a lot of good pitching the rest of the year," Mainieri said. "So, we're gonna have to some hits somewhere. We just can't get five or six hits in a ball game - and no clutch hits, you know.  The only run we scored was a solo home run, so it's hard to win games when you do that."

The series concludes at 5 p.m. Sunday at Founders Park in Columbia.
(quotes via YouTube and other Internet sources)

Clemson 5, South Carolina 1 - Cle: Jarren Purify 2B, 2 BB, RBI