In the first-ever NCAA baseball game hosted at Spirit Communications Park, the College of Charleston Cougars defeated the South Carolina Gamecocks in front of a crowd of 5,867.
The 9-0 win that the Cougars secured is also the first game against head coach Chad Holbrook’s former team.
The Cougars earned their ninth win against South Carolina in program history, which was propelled by a dominating fourth inning as the Cougars jumped out to a 6-0 lead. Charleston then went on to score three additional runs in the fifth, which eventually closed out the scoring frenzy for the evening.
South Carolina rotated through six pitchers throughout the night, and despite Holbrook's former team being limited to just one hit all night, he praised the Gamecocks on their recent strong performances in the past SEC series.
“South Carolina is in a great league, they’re a great team,” Holbrook said. “They’ve got it going, they’re playing extremely well. This [loss] isn’t going to slow them down at all and they’re going to be in the NCAA tournament. Tonight, we may or may not be in the NCAA tournament and if we’re not, this was a very satisfying postseason-type win for our team.”
Now that Holbrook’s return to Columbia is in the past, he acknowledged that it will provide the Cougars with support in the CAA standings as the regular season begins to dwindle.
"That program over there had a lot of championships, and I’ve been a part of them,” Holbrook said. “It’s about the players. Those players are great kids and South Carolina has won a lot of big games ... They got a lot to play for going forward, and I love those kids over there, and I hope this will springboard us and give us some momentum going forward into our last few games.”
With a pivotal three-game series ahead against Missouri this weekend for the final home series of the regular season, South Carolina head coach Mark Kingston is ready to see his team fight back following the loss to the Cougars.
“I think this team has shown how it will respond,” Kingston said. “When we take a punch, then we’ll be ready to throw a punch. It’s been happening now for a while, Tuesdays have not been very kind to us all year, so we’ll respond.”