Missouri baseball drops fifth straight SEC game in 10-2 loss to South Carolina
| May 04, 2024 | Sports,
Missouri baseball dropped/was victorious against South Carolina on Friday, continuing its losing streak in SEC play to five games. Three home runs combined were hit by the two teams, with two coming in the bottom of the second for the Tigers.
With this loss, the path to the SEC tournament becomes a little bit more challenging, with the Ole Miss Rebels winning, 9-4 against the Auburn Tigers and LSU knocking off top ranked Texas A&M. Missouri has to pass Ole Miss or LSU to not be one of the two bottom teams in the conference and miss out on the SEC tournament at Hoover Metropolitan Complex.
We’ve looked like two completely different teams throughout the course of the year,” Missouri head coach Kerrick Jackson said. “I gotta keep trying and keep working to try and figure it out.”
The two solo shots were the only runs of the ballgame for the Tigers (20-26, 6-15 SEC) , coming in back-to-back fashion. Mateo Serna. continuing his hot streak at the plate, hit his fourth home run of the year. Jackson Lovich followed right after with a bomb off the bat, which also carried over the left field fence.
The top of the seventh inning is when the tide began to turn more severely against the Tigers. A 5-2 lead became a larger deficit in a five-run inning from the Gamecocks. Cole Messina capped the inning off with a three-run jack to right center off Jacob Peaden. With an early two run double, he ended with five total RBI in the contest.
“If you look at the totality of the game, it unfortunately led up to that,” Jackson said. “We weren’t executing pitches, we missed out on opportunities to score when runners were in scoring position, the only thing that would have made it to the trifecta was bad defense and then came bad defense.”
Missouri starter Logan Lunceford was unable to pick up his second victory of the season in the loss. He pitched five total innings, giving up four earned runs and striking out six Gamecocks.
Runners stranded scoring position proved to be a difference for the Tigers, with seven total in the contest. The offense in total mustered up four hits, walking three times and stealing two bases in an attempt to generate more runs, proving not to be enough by the end of this game.
Gamecocks starter Roman Kimball pitched one inning of work, Ty Good followed up with four and Garrett Gainey went through 2.1 innings of work. Sixteen total strikeouts were accumulated.
Missouri will look to bounce back on Saturday in the second matchup of the three game series against South Carolina at Taylor Stadium in Columbia, Missouri.