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March 15, 2006

Box Score

Columbia, S.C. – Neil Giesler had three hits and freshman first baseman Justin Smoak drove in three runs Wednesday night to lead ninth ranked South Carolina to an 8-2 college baseball win over Yale.

After playing 16 of 17 non-conference games at home the Gamecocks take a 15-2 record to Auburn to open the 30 game Southeastern Conference schedule with a three game series this weekend. Yale dropped to 5-6 with the Wednesday loss. Live audio and live gametracker stats will be available at uscsports.com for all three games. First pitch for Friday is set for 8 p.m. ET with Saturday’s contest at 5 p.m. ET and Sunday’s scheduled for 2 p.m. ET. Mike Morgan and Tom Price will call the action for all three contests. The games can be heard on the Gamecock Radio Network including the flagship stations in Columbia, 103.1 FM and 1320 AM. Saturday’s game will be televised on CSS-TV.

Freshman left-hander Will Atwood earned his first collegiate decision by allowing one run on three hits over the first five innings. Dan Luczak allowed a hit and a run in two innings, Kyle Brown two hits in one inning, and Shawn Valdes-Fauli pitched a hitless ninth inning. The Gamecock defense played its eighth errorless game and the infield turned three double plays.

Mike Elias, 0-1, pitched the first five innings for Yale. He allowed eight hits, five runs, four earned, walked four, hit two, and was charged with the loss.

South Carolina batted around in the first inning and scored five times on only three hits, aided by the first of four hit batters by Yale pitchers, two walks and an error. Smoak had the first of his three runs batted in on a fielder’s choice in that inning and hit a two run homer, his third of the season, in the sixth inning.

Giesler stretched his hitting streak to 10 games and raised his batting average to .500 with singles in the first, second and seventh innings. He drove in one run and scored once. Hurst had two hits, including a triple, and scored once. Six other Gamecocks had one hit in a 12 hit attack. Jonathan Ratledge and Phil Disher also had RBI.

After the five run first inning outburst South Carolina scored two runs in the sixth inning and one in the seventh.

Both Yale runs came on solo home runs in the third inning by Ryan Lavarnway and the sixth by Josh Cox, just the second and third homers in 11 games by the Bulldogs.

Lavarnway and Cox also had singles to account for four of Yale’s six hits. John Janco doubled in the second inning and Pedro Obregon doubled behind Lavarnway’s eighth inning hit, but Lavarnway was out at the plate right fielder Cheyne Hurst to second baseman Andrew Crisp to catcher Trent Kline attempting to score on the play.