Winners and losers, May 17-23

Wofford has won 30 or more
games six times in the last
seven full seasons

Winners 

* Coaches may remember some victories more than others. Sometimes, it's because a win earns a conference championship or a milestone. Coastal Carolina coach Gary Gilmore got to enjoy two milestone wins this week. He picked up his 1,250th win as a head coach Tuesday when the Chanticleers beat Wake Forest. Then Saturday, he got victory No. 1,000 as coach at Coastal in a 12-2 win over Texas State. Instead of a buildup to the final out of the ninth inning, the moment came abruptly. Nick Lucky's home run in the bottom of the seventh invoked the run rule and No. 1,000 was secured. Gilmore, previously head coach at USC Aiken, led Coastal to the 2016 College World Series title.

* USC Upstate missed a chance to take charge of the Big South Conference regular-season chase when the Spartans were swept by Campbell a week ago. But coach Mike McGuire's team kept its focus on doing what it could control. The Spartans pounded UNC Asheville to open its series on Thursday as Jordan Marks got its 100th strikeout of the season and school-record 21st career win.  Upstate then rallied late twice to sweep a doubleheader and set a program record for wins in a season (37).

* A month into the season Presbyterian had a 1-6 record and four postponements/cancellations. But coach Elton Pollock's Blue Hose kept plugging and they were rewarded with an 18-16 record in the Big South Conference to earn the fourth spot in the slimmed-down conference tournament beginning this week.

* Coach Todd Interdonato has steadily built the Wofford program into one of the most consistently competitive in the state and the Southern Conference. The Terriers made history Friday when the home sweep of Mercer earned the school's first Southern Conference regular-season championship. Wofford also set school records for SoCon wins (21) and SoCon winning percentage (.700). They'll be the top seed for the conference tournament in Greenville this week.

* Charleston Southern didn't qualify for the Big South Tournament, but first-year coach Marc McMillan directed the Buccaneers to their best league winning percentage  (.450) since 2012 (.458) and they stayed in contention for the tournament until the penultimate weekend of the season.

Losers

* Clemson enters the ACC Tournament needing a lot of work to keep a couple of streaks from ending. The Tigers finished below .500 in the Atlantic Coast Conference for the first time since 2008. Coupled with the 15-15 league record of 2019 (since 2020 was COVID-19ed out), it's the first time the Tigers have had consecutive non-winning records in conference play since a three-year-streak in 1955-7. Speaking of 1957, that's the last time Clemson had a losing record overall, a 6-12 in the final year of Bob Smith's tenure. At 24-26 after the weekend sweep by Duke, Clemson must win its two pool games and a semifinal just be assured of finishing .500. The Tigers' only path to a winning record is to go 4-0 in the ACC Tournament to move to 28-26, then win at least one game in an NCAA regional before being eliminated. Then, there's the streak of NCAA Tournament appearances. Clemson has been in the postseason every season  since 1987 with the exception of the aforementioned 2008.  That's 33 of the last 34 tournaments that Clemson as played in. Again, that won't happen unless the Tigers win the ACC ACC Tournament.

As Lloyd Christmas said in Dumb and Dumber, "So, you're saying there's a chance?"

* South Carolina needed an extremely unusual alignment of results the final weekend of the season to avoid the single-elimination opening round of  the SEC Tournament, and they did not come to pass. Even then, the Gamecocks had a chance to tie Florida for sixth place and perhaps creep past the Gators in the NCAA regional host pecking order among SEC teams because of a head-to-head sweep. The Gamecocks came close, but no cigar. Down 5-4 to No. 4 Tennessee in the rubber game of their series, USC got a leadoff  double in the ninth. But the next three batters struck out and the Gamecocks lost the series. Injuries are making USC thin in the infield. Third baseman Brennan Milone suffered a hamstring injury at Kentucky last weekend and shortstop George Callil has had a flareup of a core muscle injury. Their status for the Tuesday's SEC Tournament opener against Alabama hasn't been revealed.

* The season, mercifully, came to an end for The Citadel with its weekend sweep at the hands of Western Carolina. The Bulldogs finished 12-39, second only to the 12-43 record of 2019 as the worst winning percentage in school history according to records dating to 1965. In between was the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season, a 10-6 mark. Game 2 of Friday's doubleheader was typical of the Bulldogs' bad fortunes. They tied the game in the eighth inning only to lose in 11. It was the fifth time this season that the Bulldogs didn't win a game that was tied after eight innings. They had no wins when tied after eight.