South Carolina took care of business last night and took a very important first step to winning their regional. Beating Georgia Southern was not easy and now the Gamecocks face Stetson. Stetson boasts an RPI better than 30 and took care of a pretty good NC State team yesterday afternoon. Tonight’s winner will be in the driver’s seat; they will get to throw their #3 starter for a chance to win the regional and get a mulligan. The loser, on the other hand, will have to throw their #3 tomorrow afternoon and then win back to back games with the #4 and #5 starters with no room for error.
Let’s break it down….
Pitching: Stetson threw Lindsey Caughel Friday, so it looks like right hander Will Dorsey will be Saturday’s starter. It’s worth noting that Dorsey would probably be their third pitcher if the Hatters had their way. Their ace, All-American Kurt Schluter, is out for the season. Dorsey is 7-5 with a 4.02 ERA. He has pitched the only complete game of the season and leads the team in innings pitched and strikeouts. His strikeout to walk ratio is right at 3 to 1.
Dorsey, a right hander, will probably be relieved by one of the Hatters three most used pitchers, all righties. Jake Boyd (8-1, 2.98 ERA) has 35 appearances and a strikeout to walk ratio of almost 4 to 1. He threw 3.0 innings on Friday, but he may still be available in a pinch. Robbie Powell (5-3, 3.40) and Tucker Donahue (2-3, 3.84) are often used as well. Powell tends to strikeout and walk lots of batters, and both Powell and Donahue allow batters to hit only around .250 against them. Donahue threw 2.2 against NC State, so don’t expect to see him for long. If Stetson wants to play match-ups, their most likely lefty would be freshman Cameron Griffin. Griffin has an ERA of only 3.20, but batters are batting .295 against him, and he has struck out barely more than he has walked.
Batting: The Hatters batting attack is led by catcher Nick Rickles. Rickles, who sometimes plays first base, hit .353 with 12 home runs and 60 doubles in the regular season. The rest of the line-up is pretty deep; there are four other Stetson players who batted over .325 for the season. Junior Third Baseman Ben Carhart leads the team with 62 RBI and is batting .328. Junior shortstop Mark Jones is second behind Rickles with a .339 average. Jones has also stolen 17 of 18 bases. Right fielder Mitchel Brennan and Second baseman Robert Crews are batting .338 and .336 respectively.
For USC: They are going with Colby Holmes as the starting pitcher. They will need better offensive production as Stetson is no GSU, meaning more than 2 runs are needed. So warm the bats as they will be needed along with a strong outing from Holmes.
Until a few weeks ago, Stetson was a lock to be a regional host as they are a very strong team. They have had some injuries to fight through, and it cost them some wins leading up to this weekend. Other than their ace pitcher, most of the injuries have been worked out. The Gamecocks will need more good pitching like last night and plenty of hits to get by the Hatters. It would be really good for USC to win this game and be in command, to do it they need offense. LOHD expects it and hopefully are crystal ball is right when we say SC wins.
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