April 9, 2005
Baton Rouge, La. – Senior right-hander Zac McCamie pitched South Carolina’s first complete game of the season Saturday and limited Louisiana State to three hits in a 5-1 victory as the Gamecocks took a 2-0 lead in a three game Southeastern Conference series.
South Carolina will go for its first sweep ever over the Bayou Bengals in a 12 noon CDT start on Sunday with senior right-hander Aaron Rawl, 5-2, 2.80 ERA, the scheduled Gamecock starter. Junior left-hander Greg Smith, 4-1, 2.98, will start for LSU. The victory, seventh in a row for the Gamecocks, improved the South Carolina record to 27-5, 7-4 in the conference. LSU is 23-10, 5-6.
South Carolina won its first game of a series over LSU, and clinched its first series win at Baton Rouge with the Saturday win. A sweep on Sunday would be another Gamecock first. Over the past three seasons, however, South Carolina is 10-6 against LSU.
First baseman Steve Pearce drove in a first inning run with a single and hit his ninth home run of the season in the third as South Carolina scored single runs in the first three innings to take command of the game. The Gamecocks added two insurance runs in the sixth inning on a couple of hits and an LSU error.
Two of the five runs were unearned as LSU committed two errors in the game while South Carolina played errorless baseball for the second consecutive game.
McCamie improved his season record to 7-1 and his two year record as a Gamecock to 14-1. It was his first career complete game. Clay Dirks, the LSU starter suffered his first loss of the season to fall to 7-1. He was 8-2 last year and has a 15-2 career record.
South Carolina, ranked as high as fourth in the national polls, took a 1-0 first inning lead over LSU, ranked as high as sixth. Chris Brown led off the game with a walk, moved to second on a ground out, took third on a fly out to center field, and scored on the Pearce single.
An unearned run in the second made it 2-0. Davy Gregg beat out an infield hit and raced all the way home when Dirks threw wildly on Brown’s slow grounder to the left of the mound. Pearce crushed a line drive just inside the left field foul pole for his ninth home run in the third inning as the score mounted to 3-0.
McCamie had early control problems and walked the bases loaded in the second inning but pitched out of the jam. In nine innings he walked five, struck out six and threw only 113 pitches, 67 of them for strikes.
McCamie didn’t allow a hit until Quinn Stewart singled with one out in the fifth inning. He moved to second on a ground out and scored on a single up the middle by Clay Harris. The only other hit allowed by McCamie was an eighth inning single by Ryan Stavinoha, and he was wiped out by an inning ending double play.
In the sixth inning Mark Stanley walked with one out and Mahoney dumped a bloop double down the right field line. Tiger right fielder Stavinoha’s wild throw attempting to get Mahoney at second allowed Stanley to score and sent Mahoney to third. He scored on Gregg’s second infield hit of the game.
Gregg and Pearce each had two of South Carolina’s nine hits. Brown, Seven Tolleson, Jon Willard, Stanley and Mahoney each had one hit.
