How Coastal Carolina remained red hot with a second drubbing of Clemson this season
Fifteen has been the number for Coastal Carolina against Clemson this season.
In both games between the in-state college baseball rivals, Coastal has raced out to 15-0 leads.
The Chanticleers’ second drubbing of the Tigers this season came Tuesday night. They led 15-0 through four innings and cruised to a 17-2 win to remain red hot in front of a season-high attendance of 3,516 at Springs Brooks Stadium.
CCU defeated Clemson 16-7 on March 22 at Doug Kingsmore Stadium in Clemson.
“You know, that’s an incredibly proud and great program over there,” Coastal coach Gary Gilmore said of the Tigers, who are 32-21. “They’ve got a very good team. Their RPI is a good bit better than ours. To get one win against them period is a lot. To be able to get two is very special and it doesn’t happen very often.”
Coastal is streaking as the postseason approaches. The Chants have won 17 of their past 20 games to improve to 34-16-1 and receive votes in national top-25 polls with just a three-game series at home against South Alabama (30-20, 16-11) remaining in the regular season.
The Sun Belt Championship is May 24-29 at Riverwalk Stadium in Montgomery, Alabama. The Chants are in the top 30 in the RPI ranking and are currently projected to receive an NCAA Regional berth even if they don’t win the conference tournament.
“We dug a really deep hole for ourselves early. We just couldn’t find any consistency and we had some guys banged up,” Gilmore said. “Since we got everybody healthy and kind of figured out some roles and guys bought into what we were trying to do, we’ve started to play really well and hopefully we can keep it going.”
Piling up the runs on Clemson
CCU’s offense has heated up, as the Chants have scored at least nine runs in seven of the past nine games, going 8-1 over that stretch.
Senior Tyler Johnson has paced the offense all season, leading the team with a .353 batting average, 14 home runs and 48 RBIs.
The Chants shared the offensive exploits Tuesday.
Junior third baseman Dale Thomas was 3 for 4 at the plate with a grand slam home run and a career-high seven RBI, which is one shy of the school record for RBI in a game.
“That was actually my first ever career [grand slam] home run my whole entire life, so that moment was very special to me,” Thomas said. “I’ve just got to thank God for giving me that moment and it’s something I’ll never forget. . . . I never had that opportunity and today against a big opponent, a big rivalry, it means the world to me.”
Senior first baseman Chris Rowan Jr. was 3 for 4 with a double and three runs scored, senior second baseman Matt McDermott had two doubles, two RBI and two runs scored, junior outfielder Nick Lucky was 2 for 4 with three runs, and junior catcher Kameron Guangorena hit a two-run homer in his only official at-bat and scored two runs.
“The kids did a great job tonight. They really came focused and ready to play,” Gilmore said. “. . . It just wasn’t a great game for them and it seemed like everything that could go right for us went right for us. A lot of that is our kids were competing.”
The moment was not too big for CCU true freshman righthander Matthew Potok of Jackson, New Jersey, who was making his first collegiate start and his 14th appearance for CCU.
Potok, who entered the game with a 5.60 ERA and an opponent batting average of .313, shut the Tigers down. He allowed just one hit through four innings while the Chants took their 15-run lead. Over his five innings, he allowed two runs on four hits with a walk and four strikeouts while hitting 94 mph on the radar gun with his fastball.
“I was very proud of Potok,” Gilmore said. “He’s a young kid out there and you don’t really know what you’re going to get when you run him out there in that environment and that young man was absolutely outstanding. Barring anything happening to him health-wise that young man is going to be a really special pitcher here before it’s over with.”
In the past 20 games, Coastal has gone 14-1 in the Sun Belt Conference with three-game series sweeps of Appalachian State, Texas-Arlington, Little Rock and Troy, when it won each game by four runs.
The Chants have moved up to third in the conference at 19-7-1, behind Texas State (23-4) and Georgia Southern (20-7).
Clemson is 10-16 in the ACC, going 11-8 in its last 19 games. The Tigers entered last week on a 10-4 run before dropping a game to College of Charleston and two of three to Virginia, a top-12 team in most national polls.
The Tigers host lowly Boston College (19-31, 5-22) as they try to secure a berth in the 12-team ACC Tournament.
“We’ve been here before. We’ve played really good baseball, we’ve played really bad baseball, and the bottom line is we’ve got to let it go,” Clemson coach Monte Lee said. “We’ve got to be ready to go and control our own destiny. We’ve got to earn the right to keep playing. That’s what I just told the team. The bottom line is you have the opportunity to earn the right to keep playing baseball past this weekend, but you’ve got to earn it.
“It’s going to take sacrifice, it’s going to take toughness, it’s going to take selflessness. It’s going to take everybody pulling together and playing our best baseball.”
Clemson used nine pitchers Tuesday who allowed 14 hits and 10 walks while hitting six batters. CCU’s Tanner Garrison was hit by pitches three times. Both teams used their primary starters against conference opponents in three-game series this past weekend, though Clemson starter Nick Hoffmann was starting his ninth game of the season.
“We didn’t play well, we didn’t pitch well early in the game and they took advantage of us,” Lee said. “They beat us pretty good. It was tough to watch, way too many free 90s, a lot of walks and HBPs, but give Coastal credit. They swung the bats well, they pitched exceptionally well, they were the much better team tonight in their home ballpark.”
The Chants snapped a three-game losing streak to Clemson going back to the 2018 and ’19 seasons, won two consecutive games in the series for the first time, and improved to 12-47 all-time versus the Tigers. The Chants have won three of the past four games in Conway between the teams.
Rolling into the postseason
Coastal was without starting pitcher Reece Maniscalco for seven weeks earlier this season, and lost another starting pitcher in Michael Knorr, who was hitting 98-100 on the radar gun in early starts, for another four weeks. And Knorr was brought back slowly when he returned, throwing limited innings in his first few outings.
But they are back in their projected spots atop the starting rotation, and the Chants have been relatively healthy among position players all season. Catchers Guangorena and Garrison took turns missing 10 games or more with injuries, but both are now back.
The Chants are without a key piece of the bullpen in righthander Matt Joyce, who has been out for two weeks with an injury to his throwing arm but has been rehabbing in an attempt to return.
“We bust our butts doing everything we can to just win one game at a time and take everything one step at a time, and now it’s coming at the right time where we’re starting to click very well,” Thomas said.
This story was originally published May 17, 2022 at 9:34 PM with the headline "How Coastal Carolina remained red hot with a second drubbing of Clemson this season."
