Baseball Squares Off with #4 South Carolina Friday
6/1/2011 9:37:00 PM | Baseball
STATESBORO, Ga. - The Georgia Southern Baseball team (36-24) travels 130 miles to Columbia, S.C., as the fourth seed in Columbia Regional and faces defending national champion South Carolina (45-14) Friday, June 3rd at 7 p.m., at Carolina Stadium. The Gamecocks are the number-one seed in the the regional and the number-four national seed. They are currently ranked #4 in the country by Baseball America.
The two other teams in the regional, two-seed Stetson (41-18) and the three-seed North Carolina State (34-25), will face each other in the other opening game of the regional at 1 p.m. The winners of Friday's games will meet at 7 p.m. on Saturday, while the losers will play an elimination game at 1 p.m.
The Eagles have faced South Carolina 132 times in their history with only one of those meetings coming in the postseason. The Gamecocks won that game in the 1980 Atlantic Regional at Clemson, S.C., 7-2, and hold a 84-48 overall record in the series. Recently, the two teams have met in a pair of midweek games in 2009 and 2010. Both contests went to extra innings and were won by South Carolina. The Eagles fell 8-5 in 13 innings in 2010 after Brady Thomas hit a three-run triple in the top of the 13th at J.I. Clements Stadium in Statesboro. The Gamecocks won the 2009 meeting, 2-1, on a 10th inning walk-off hit by DeAngelo Mack.
This will be the 13th trip to the postseason for Georgia Southern. GSU has never played in a regional in Columbia, but has played three regionals in the state of South Carolina with all three taking place at Clemson, S.C. The three Clemson Regional trips occurred in 1980, 1996 and 2002. The latest trip to a regional for the Eagles came in 2009 at the Fullerton Regional.
Georgia Southern seeks its first victory in the NCAA Tournament since 2002 when it defeated Elon 6-2 in game two of the Clemson Regional. GSU is 2-6 all-time in regional games played in the state of South Carolina. The other win in a South Carolina regional came in 1996 when the Eagles defeated Old Dominion, 6-0.
GSU won the 2011 Southern Conference Tournament with a 1-0 shutout of Samford in the title game to earn the SoCon's automatic bid to the postseason tournament. Chris Beck (Jefferson, Ga.) tossed his second complete game of the season and earned his second win of the tournament with a stellar three-hit performance. Beck (9-4, 3.21) set a SoCon Tournament record with 22 combined strikeouts over his two starts.
Senior Andy Moye (Alpharetta, Ga.) will start game one of the regional to give Beck an extra day to rest after his masterful run in the conference tournament that netted him the Most Outstanding Player Award. Moye (7-1, 3.21) has never faced the Gamecocks, but has postseason experience under his belt. The senior pitcher is one of three Eagles, along with Eric Phillips (Carrollton, Ga.) and Colin Snow (Alpharetta, Ga.) who played in the 2009 Fullerton Regional.
Phillips went four-for-nine in the Fullerton Regional with five RBIs and two runs scored in the two games against Gonzaga and Utah. The junior captain is also four-for-nine in his career against South Carolina. Snow pitched 3.1 innings in the first game of the regional against Gonzaga and allowed two runs off three hits.
All Georgia Southern Baseball games can be heard on Eagle 102.9 FM in Statesboro and are also available online at GeorgiaSouthernEagles.com/Eaglevision beginning 30 minutes prior to first pitch. Ryan Chambers of the Georgia Southern Radio Network will call all the action.
Fans may follow Georgia Southern Baseball by visiting GeorgiaSouthernEagles.com/baseball or check in at twitter.com/GSAthletics or facebook.com/GSAthletics for short updates.
