Walk it off, again! Gamecocks clinch series over Clemson in dramatic fashion
South Carolina outfielder Andrew Eyster walks up to the hit Foreigner song, “Cold as Ice.”
So far this season, Eyster has been living up to the song.
After hitting a walk-off single in Saturday night’s 11-inning epic at Fluor Field, Eyster and the Gamecocks walked off against rival Clemson a second time on Sunday, 8-7. Showing ice-cold nerves under pressure, Eyster drilled another game-winning single to send the Gamecocks running out of the first-base dugout.
“Sometimes divine intervention really is a thing, and he had two opportunities, and he took advantage of both of them,” Gamecocks head coach Mark Kingston said of Eyster’s back-to-back walk-off hits.
“He’s a very even-keeled guy. He doesn’t get too high; he doesn’t get too low. And a lot of the good ones, that’s how they are. They’re very intense. And we tell our guys, ‘Play with emotion, not emotional.’ And he’s the poster boy for that.”
With the win, USC clinched the series and moved to 6-0 on the season. A third game in the series won’t be played until Tuesday, May 11 after the scheduled opener at Clemson’s Doug Kingsmore Stadium was rained out.
The weekend is one Eyster won’t be forgetting any time soon. In addition to driving in the game-winning run, Eyster also singled in the game-tying run in the bottom of the seventh inning on Sunday. The junior knows just how much those moments resonate with fans on both sides of the rivalry series.
“It means more to me the longer I’ve been here and the more I’ve gotten to realize what this rivalry means to everyone,” Eyster said. “All the former players, current players, fans, alumni — it means so much to so many people. And to be able to help us win those first two games and clinch the series, it means a lot. So many people are watching, and I’m glad we could could make a lot of people’s day.”
3 Observations from USC-Clemson
1. Wes Clarke does it again
No hitter in the country is hotter than junior South Carolina slugger Wes Clarke, who continues to hit home runs in bunches.
Though the Tigers managed to strike him out three times and hold him to one hit in Game 1, Clarke’s powerful bat couldn’t be silenced for long. The right-handed hitter homered twice Sunday — his seventh and eighth homers of the season. South Carolina has only played six games. For context, Clarke hit eight homers in 16 games last season. That total led the SEC.
Both of Sunday’s homers came at crucial points in the game. Clarke tied the game in the third inning with a 417-foot solo shot off of the Founders Park batter’s eye in dead center field. In his next at-bat in the fifth inning, he crushed a three-run, 408-foot homer to left center field to give the Gamecocks a 5-3 lead.
“It’s very difficult to pitch to him,” Clemson head coach Monte Lee said. “I believe he came up pretty much every time with runners on base, so there wasn’t a whole lot we could do outside of pitch to him and try to get him out. We were able to get ahead of him. We had him at two strikes in a couple of at-bats. We just didn’t execute pitches with two strikes to him. I think that was the key. We were unable to put him away when we had him on the ropes.”
The 6-foot-2, 236-pound Clarke has garnered national attention for his early season power burst, earning three national player of the week awards after he went 10 for 13 and homered six times in his first four games — including a three-homer outburst against Winthrop.
Including Sunday’s action, eight of Clarke’s first 13 hits this season have been homers. Clarke is batting .636 to start the season with a whopping 1.818 slugging percentage.
“He’s locked in. There’s no doubt about it,” Kingston said. “I don’t want to talk about it too much. It almost feels like talking about a no-hitter in the seventh inning. Just not gonna do it.”
2. Starting pitchers sizzle
Clemson freshman Ty Olenchuk knows a thing or two about performing on a big stage. He won three state titles as a quarterback at Dutch Fork and one state title as a pitcher.
The 6-foot-1, 205-pound right-hander from Irmo drew the start against the Gamecocks on Sunday and showed why he was a highly touted baseball recruit. Making his second career start, Olenchuk struck out six, walked none and scattered four hits over 4.1 innings. The two runs he allowed both came on solo home runs.
Leaning heavily on his fastball, Olenchuk touched 94 miles per hour several times on the stadium gun and sat comfortably in the low 90s, while occasionally mixing in a low-80s cutter. He pounded the strike zone with 49 strikes on 63 pitches and wasn’t afraid to challenge South Carolina hitters up in the zone.
The same held true for South Carolina starter Brannon Jordan, who struck out eight Clemson hitters in just four innings. Like Olenchuk, Jordan worked up in the zone with a low-90s fastball, touching 93 mph, and he kept the Tigers off balanced with a sharp, vertical breaking ball. He also walked four Tigers but allowed just two runs on three hits.
3. Battle of the bullpens
The one area where both Olenchuk and Jordan fell short was in providing length for their respective teams. Both Clemson and South Carolina turned to their bullpens in the middle innings, and the game quickly morphed from a pitcher’s duel to a see-saw affair.
Veteran lefty Mat Clark surrendered the three-run home run to Clarke in relief of Olenchuk in the fifth inning. And the Tigers churned through three South Carolina relievers in a four-run seventh inning to take a 7-5 lead before USC right-hander Andrew Peters neutralized the situation and provided two scoreless innings and four strikeouts.
Helped by a Clemson throwing error, the Gamecocks tagged reliever Rob Hughes for two runs in the bottom half of the seventh to immediately tie the game.
This story was originally published February 28, 2021 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Walk it off, again! Gamecocks clinch series over Clemson in dramatic fashion."
