No. 22 Cougars knock off No. 18 Chanticleers

With the two highest-ranked college baseball teams in the state of South Carolina meeting, there was plenty of intrigue and a bit of spotlight directed toward Coastal Carolina’s Springs Brooks Stadium on Tuesday night.

And for the most part this season, the Chanticleers have seemed to rise to these bigger moments and feed off such marquee matchups.

That wasn’t the case in this one, though, as too many errors, too few timely hits from the hosts and plenty of offense from College of Charleston made for a lopsided finish.

The No. 22-ranked Cougars, who moved into the Baseball America top-25 poll this week, led most of the way while closing out an 8-3 win over No. 18 Coastal Carolina before a crowd of 1,312.

“I think it felt pretty big,” College of Charleston coach Monte Lee said. “And I’ll tell you this, it makes you proud, it really does. It just makes you proud. I really look up to Gary Gilmore. When you walk in this ballpark and you see what he has accomplished in his career ... He’s the kind of guy that obviously I’m trying to get to his level as a coach. I aspire to be like him and the amount of success he’s had.

“It makes me proud being a mid-major where we’ve got two programs in Coastal Carolina and the College of Charleston that are the two highest-ranked teams in our state. It’s a proud feeling.”

Coastal Carolina (26-10), which is 6-1 in big games against the ACC and SEC this season, committed three errors in the loss and gave up 11 hits to College of Charleston (25-8).

Gilmore was brief with his comments afterward, saying several times that the Cougars were simply the better team on the field Tuesday night.

His players, meanwhile, felt they didn’t deliver to the standards they’ve established so far this season – and the frustration from both ends was palpable.

“No, no, no, no, no, no. That team’s no different than any other team we played,” junior centerfielder Anthony Marks said when asked about the significance of the matchup. “We just didn’t give them our best effort. They came out, threw a couple haymakers, we tried to answer, we struggled a little bit. But that team is nothing special. If we play our ‘A game,’ I think we’re right there with them 10 times out of 10. We didn’t play our best ballgame tonight.”

The Chants actually struck first Tuesday, going up 1-0 in the opening inning when Marks led off with a double, took third on a bunt single by junior Connor Owings and scored on a double-play groundout by sophomore Michael Paez.

But the lead didn’t last long.

College of Charleston opened the top of the second inning with a double from Blake Butler, who came around to score two batters later on Morgan Phillips’ RBI single to left. Bradley Jones then crushed a two-run home run to left – one of the longest hit in that direction at the first-year ballpark – to give the visitors a 3-1 lead.

The Chants got one back when sophomore G.K. Young doubled in the fourth, took third on a wild pitch and scored on junior Zach Remillard’s deep sacrifice fly to left.

And they came up big in the field in the fifth to keep it a one-run game. After back-to-back one-out throwing errors put runners on first and second for College of Charleston, Ryan Brown singled through the left side to get the runners moving. But freshman left fielder Al Molina threw out Erven Roper at home plate for the second out, and junior reliever Tyler Poole came out of the bullpen to strike out Alex Pastorius to end the inning.

Coastal Carolina then put itself in position to tie the game in the bottom of the fifth as junior David Parrett led off with a walk and stole second, but junior Casey Schroeder flew out to left, Molina struck out looking and Marks grounded out to first to end the threat.

From there, the Cougars started pulling away.

“We all know how good Coastal Carolina is,” Lee said. “We knew that we had to come in this game and put a complete game together.”

Indeed, they did.

Phillips lined a 1-2 pitch from Poole to the left-centerfield gap for a two-out RBI double in the sixth to make it 4-2.

And the defense let the Chants down again in the seventh. Roper led off with a single and then took third when Champ Rowland reached on an error by junior first baseman Tyler Chadwick, who couldn’t snag a routine throw to first on a sac bunt. Roper came in to score on a wild pitch from Poole and Pastorius added an RBI sac fly to make it 6-2.

Remillard added an RBI single in the eighth for Coastal Carolina, but that’s all the Chants would get. Reliever Chase Henry came in and struck out Parrett to strand the bases loaded.

The Cougars then added two more runs in the ninth to further stretch their lead.

“They just outplayed us and they deserved to win,” Gilmore said. “They did what they needed to do. We weren’t very good.”

Marks finished 2-for-5 with a double and a run scored to extend his hitting streak to 14 games, Owings was 2-for-4 with a run, Remillard finished 1-for-3 with two RBIs and Young and Parrett each had doubles as well.

Freshman Zack Hopeck (2-2) took the loss, giving up five hits, a walk and three runs in 4 2/3 innings.

Nathan Helvey (5-3) earned the win for the Cougars, giving up four hits, a walk and two runs in five innings while notching five strikeouts. Henry earned his fourth save, going 1 1/3 scoreless innings.

Phillips was 2-for-4 with a run and two RBIs to lead the victors while Brown was 2-for-4 with a run and Butler was 2-for-5 with a run and an RBI.

The teams will meet again next Wednesday at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant.

Before that, though, Coastal Carolina hosts a pivotal Big South series with Radford starting on Friday. The Chants and Highlanders are tied atop the conference standings at 10-2 so far.

“We’ve got a big conference series coming up now. We can’t dwell on this loss,” Paez said. “All we’ve got to do is patch up our [defense]. Friday it’s going to be first place vs. first place here at our park. We’re 0-2 the last two games at our park so we’ve got to defend our park better.”

This story was originally published April 14, 2015 at 10:21 PM with the headline "No. 22 Cougars knock off No. 18 Chanticleers."