Winners and losers, April 12-18

 

A four-run seventh inning in Saturday's first game
gave Mark Kingston his 100th victory
as South Carolina's coach. (USC photo)

Winners

* If Wofford had any residual disappointment from losing a midweek game to Hub City rival USC Upstate, it didn't linger into the weekend Southern Conference series with UNC Greensboro.  

The Terriers went 3-0 against the Spartans, with a good bit of drama in each game. In Friday's opener, Wofford came from behind twice - the second time cooking up a run after two were out and none on in the ninth to force extra innings - before winning in the 12th on Trey Yunger's sixth RBI of the night. Nolen Hester had a school-record six hits. Hit No. 5 tied the game in the ninth and No. 6 put him on the path to scoring the winner in the 12th. In between he was thrown out trying to score the winning run to end the ninth. The six hits tied a Southern Conference record.

There was more of the same in Saturday's doubleheader at Russell. C. King Field on the Wofford campus. The Terriers trailed 10-3 entering the bottom of the seventh in Game 1. They scored six runs in the seventh and another in the eighth to tie the score. Jack Renwick delivered another walk-off win with his ninth-inning single.

With a series win secured, Wofford went on to make more history in the nightcap. Elliot Carney pitched the first no-hitter in the school's NCAA Division I history.

All in all, the weekend might have made the loss to Upstate seem in the distant past.

* College of Charleston has shown signs of rounding into shape for the stretch run in the CAA. The Cougars beat Clemson for the second straight season for the first time in school history, then followed that up with a conference series win over James Madison. CofC is at .500 for the first time since February.

* Benedict finally got to play after a hiatus of almost a month. The Tigers beat Morris twice, stealing 26 bases in the doubleheader. 

* South Carolina made sure Mark Kingston's 100th win at the helm of the program would be memorable. Down 2-0 and showing little offensive punch entering the seventh inning of Game 1 of Saturday's doubleheader at LSU, the Gamecocks erupted for four runs to win. They followed that with their best offensive performance of the series to take the doubleheader and series. Carolina improved to 10-5 in the SEC and needs all the conference success it can get.  The next three league series are against Top 10 teams Arkansas, Mississippi and Mississippi State.

* Columbia International also had a noteworthy weekend. The Rams won two of three at Appalachian Athletic Conference foe Bryan, ranked No. 14 in NAIA.

* The Citadel ended its losing streak at 12 games last week when Brooks O'Brien's squeeze bunt in the 11th delivered a 3-2 victory over Jacksonville. The Bulldogs were one out away from a 13th straight loss when O'Brien tied the game with a two-run single in the ninth.  The Bulldogs went on to win two of three in a SoCon weekend series against East Tennessee State.

* Florence-Darlington Tech entered the weekend with a slender 1 1/2 game lead in NJCAA Region 10, with second-place Spartanburg Methodist coming to town for four games. A 6-0 shutout by the Pioneers in Saturday's Game 1 pared the margin to a half game.  But the Stingers responded in style. Hunter Parks and Matt Poston combined on a two-hit shutout to make Saturday's effort a wash. SMC had leads of  3-0 and 5-3 in Game 1 Sunday before Tech rallied in its final scheduled at-bat to force extra innings. The Stingers won in 10 on a wild pitch, then rode Charlie Mac Toman's 11-strikeout outing to clinch a series win. FD Tech can clinch the top seed for the region tournament with one win in its final four region games.

* Presbyterian moved three games above .500 in the Big South Conference with a 3-1 series win at Longwood. All three wins were by one-run margins and secured in the final inning.

* USC Sumter had its best week in a while, going 5-1 to improve to 23-19 overall.

Losers

* Barely a week ago things were looking up for Clemson. The Tigers had handcuffed Virginia in Game 1 April 9 to move within a victory of its fourth straight ACC series win. The teams were tied after six innings of Game 2, but that's when the wheels began falling off the Tigers' bandwagon. The Cavaliers scored the final four runs to win that game, then used three late unearned runs to rally for a 6-5 win in the series finale.

The misery has continued this week. College of Charleston clubbed the Tigers, 13-6, midweek and Miami rolled to a pair of lopsided wins to open that ACC series. The ultimate result of Game 3 was the same, only more frustrating:  a 3-2 loss in walk-off fashion to give Clemson its second six-game losing streak of the season.

Clemson was held to 19 hits and seven runs for the series, numbers that would be good enough to win perhaps only with Vanderbilt's pitching staff. Throw in Miami's offensive prowess and it made for a long weekend.

The next chance for the Tigers to get things turned around is in Athens Tuesday against Georgia.  The Bulldogs handed Clemson its only shutout of the season in an earlier meeting.

* Erskine entered the weekend home series with Mount Olive hopeful of tightening the Conference Carolinas standings. A 9-0 shutout in Game 1 did just that, but the Trojans responded with a pair of 20-run outings before a more pedestrian 6-4 win in the series finale.

A little of both

* Voorhees surprised Xavier (La.)  in the first game of their four-game series in Denmark.  XULA was the No. 1 team in the most recent small college rankings by Black College Nines, a Websaite covering HBCUs. Xavier rebounded to take the final three games.

* The first home run hit by the Bob Jones baseball team in its home park came in the final home game of the season. Rommel Acosta did the honors, but the Bruins were unable to end their first season at Conestee Park on a winning note, dropping all three games of a series with Trinity Baptist.

* USC Upstate took momentum of a midweek win over Wofford in to its weekend Big South series at Charleston Southern, and the Spartans looked strong again when Jordan Marks outdueled R.J. Petit in the series opener.  Things were going well in Saturday's doubleheader opener as Upstate took a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the seventh. But Furman refugee M.J. Sasapan had a two-run single in the seventh and Australian Sam Trend-Beacom hit a two-run homer in the eighth to put the Buccaneers on  top and they held on for a win. Daniel Padysak and John Sendziak combined on a shutout in Game 2 to give CSU the twinbill and series win.

* USC Union had a 4-1 week against out of region competition. The Bantams started the week by knocking off No. 1 Walters State to end the Senators' school-record 31-game winning streak. The perennial NJCAA World Series contender from Tennessee answered with a 27-0 win in Game 2. The Bantams bounced back to win three games over the weekend.

* Winthrop pitchers struck out 21 batters against Gardner-Webb, only to lose on a 13th-inning home run. The Eagles split the first two games at Radford and had the potential tying run at the play in the rubber game, only to have a baserunner thrown out making an ill-advised attempt to take third base on a pitch that got away from the catcher. The play ended the game.