March 30, 2005
Charleston, S.C. – Jon Willard hit his fifth home run of the season and Cliff Donald worked five solid innings to pick up his first win of the year as eighth ranked South Carolina defeated The Citadel 4-2 at Riley Park. Wednesday night’s game at Riley Park was played in front of a record crowd of 5,803 fans, the largest attendance in The Citadel’s history. Carolina improves to 21-5 while the loss drops The Citadel to 9-14 this season.
Donald yielded just one run on four hits with two strikeouts and no walks allowed in his longest outing of the year. Citadel reliever Griff Beckham took the loss and is now 1-4. Beckham hurled three innings and allowed two runs on three hits. Carolina reliever Brent Marsh came on in relief in the ninth inning with no outs and two runners on base and retired three consecutive batters earning his fifth save of the season.
The Gamecocks went ahead 2-0 in the top of the third inning. Mark Stanley opened up the frame with a base hit to left field and advanced to second on Davy Gregg’s sacrifice bunt. Chris Brown knocked a one-out RBI double to right center field scoring Gregg and also advanced to third base on a fielding error by second baseman Jon Aughey. Brown would score the second run on a deep sacrifice fly to center field from Michael Campbell. The double for Brown extended his hitting streak to nine games.
USC increased the lead to three runs in the fourth inning on the second RBI of the game from Campbell. Davy Gregg had a one-out bunt single, stole second and scored on Campbell’s two-out single to right field. Campbell now owns a career-long eight-game hitting streak.
The Citadel scored their first run of the game in the bottom half of the fifth as Chris Swauger doubled and scored on a RBI single from Mark Egleton. Carolina would get the run back in the sixth inning though as Jon Willard launched the first pitch from Bulldogs reliever Michael McLaurin over the right center wall for his fifth home run of the season. The Bulldogs would add a run in the eighth inning off USC reliever Conor Lalor.
Willard and Stanley each had two hits to lead the Gamecocks at the plate. Chris Ard, Matt Matulia, Josh Stackley, Swauger and Egleton each had two hits to tally 10 for the evening for the Cadets.
South Carolina returns to conference action on Friday night hosting Georgia in a three-game series at Sarge Frye Field. Friday night’s game is set for 7 p.m. and will be televised on CSS-TV with Matt Stewart and Nate Ross calling the action. Saturday’s first pitch is 4 p.m. and will be televised on SEC-TV and FOX Sports Net South with Dave Neal and Nick Belmonte broadcasting the game. Sunday’s first pitch is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. All three games will be on air on the South Carolina Radio Network with live gametracker stats and live audio also available at www.uscsports.com. Mike Morgan and Tommy Moody will call all three games on radio for Carolina.
