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| Lander's Mason Streater has come on strong since starting this season 2-for-15. (Lander photo) |
Winners
* Lander cooled off Francis Marion with a doubleheader sweep on Sunday. The Patriots had extended their wining streak to seven games with a victory in the series opener on Saturday. The Bearcats' Mason Streater has been red-hot. He extended his hitting streak to 12 games by getting six hits on Sunday. The Boiling Springs High graduate is hitting .521 (25-for-48) during the streak and has nine multi-hit games. He has 14 hits over his last six games.
* North Greenville went 3-0 against Southern Wesleyan to open its Conference Carolinas series (Game 4 is Tuesday) and took advantage of a 2-2 weekend by Mount Olive against Barton to move past the Trojans into first place in the league standings. After finishing with Southern Wesleyan, the Crusaders go head-to-head with Mount Olive next weekend.
* Granted, it's just one weekend of NJCAA Region 10 play, but USC Salkehatchie coach Jeremy Joye probably should be feeling good about where his team stands. The Indians won three of four over USC Sumter over the weekend to open their league schedule. Considering Salkehatchie was 4-20 in the league in the last full season in 2019, things seem to be looking up.
* Florence-Darlington Tech hadn't played in two weeks because of postponements and cancellations, but coach Preston McDonald's squad didn't show any rust in its Sunday sweep of Caldwell. The Stingers stretched their winning streak to eight games - their last loss was to St. John's River State on Feb. 20 - and extended their streak of double-figures scoring to seven. FD Tech opened Region 10 play with its bye week in the seven-team league, but faces current leader Salkehatchie in its first conference series next weekend.
* Charleston Southern won its second straight Big South Conference series. That's the first time the Buccaneers have done that to start the league schedule since 2004.
Losers
* Presbyterian lost four more games to COVID-19 issues in/around the program, extending the total to seven. Throw in a cancellation of the final game at Eastern Kentucky and the Blue Hose haven't played since Feb. 27. Baseball teams need to play regularly to get in a groove. Winthrop also got a taste of disappointment when its weekend series with Gardner-Webb was postponed. It will be interesting to see if the Big South will allow some of the postponements to be made up during the scheduled second series.
* Clemson's losing streak hit six games with the weekend sweep at North Carolina. One of the Tigers' biggest problems has been on offense. They've had more than five hits just once during their slide. At 1-5 in the ACC, there's a lot of ground to be made up, even with the expanded 36-game league schedule because of COVID-19 adjustments.
* South Carolina got a rude awakening in its series sweep at Texas. The Gamecocks saw two solid starting pitching performances wasted when they couldn't solve Longhorns pitching. In Game 3, the Gamecocks bats woke up (compared to the first two games) but the defense and pitching failed them. Outside a six-run eighth inning in a midweek win over The Citadel, Carolina's offense has been no better than so-so over the last two weeks. With an SEC trip to pitching-rich Vanderbilt coming up next weekend, USC needs to look for some offensive answers.
* Claflin (15 games), Bob Jones (11) and Southern Wesleyan (11) continued their early season struggles. For Panthers fans looking for a bright spot, Georgia Southwestern didn't crack double figures in either game Saturday. Claflin had allowed 10 or more runs in 12 of the first 13 losses of the skid. Bob Jones is still looking for the first win in program history.
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