Chanticleers close regular season on road with plenty at stake

The Coastal Carolina baseball team enters its final Big South series still in contention for the conference’s regular-season championship, but coach Gary Gilmore said he’s not emphasizing that to his players this week because it’s a bit out of the Chanticleers’ control.

And with their top two starting pitchers down with injuries, he just wants the Chants as focused as possible on maximizing what they can control these next three games.

Coastal Carolina (34-16, 16-5 Big South) opens a three-game set against Campbell (29-22, 10-11) in Buies Creek, N.C., on Thursday while sitting a game back in the Big South standings. League leader Radford, meanwhile, travels to UNC Asheville to take on the conference’s 10th-place team. The Highlanders also own a potential tiebreaker with the Chants, having won two out of three in the teams’ series last month.

“It’s not something I harp on here. It’s one of the steps to get where we’re ultimately trying to go,” Gilmore said of the conference race. “It’s a big honor to try to compete for it, [but] am I going to be disappointed if somehow we win three games and Radford doesn’t lose any?

“With the adversity this group of young men has been through this year with this injury, that injury, this happening, that happening and playing one of the hardest schedules in the country, I’m just proud as heck of them that they’ve been as resilient as they have been. We keep finding ways to get guys to produce and allow us to win.”

After dropping the first game of their series with Liberty last weekend, the Chants came back to post two big wins over the Flames and are now 19th in the NCAA’s RPI. Coastal Carolina is also ranked No. 25 this week in the USA Today coaches poll and No. 26 by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association.

With that resume and the aforementioned strength of schedule – ranked 17th toughest nationally by WarrenNolan.com – the Chants are well positioned to return to the NCAA Regionals after missing out last year. Gilmore thinks they also maintain an outside shot at hosting an NCAA Regional if they finish strong through the Big South tournament next week.

But again, that’s all a little bit too big-picture for Gilmore to fixate on as the Chants reshuffle their rotation once again this week while trying to win three games at Campbell.

Freshman Bobby Holmes (4-0, 1.28 earned-run average), who just moved out of the bullpen to make his first collegiate start a week ago, is now Coastal Carolina’s No. 1 starter, while fellow rookie Shane Sawczak (3-3, 4.86) is next in line and the No. 3 starter remains up in the air.

“Right here and now, we’re in a decent position to at least get in the big tournament. Hopefully we can position ourselves to challenge even potentially to host, but again, I don’t have control of that,” Gilmore said. “I’m not going to worry about it. I’m not going to worry about the conference tournament. [The focus is] can we go to Campbell and compete?”

Confidence is running high for the Chants after taking those final two games against Liberty, including a 12-1 rout in the rain-shortened series finale Monday.

And after the frustration of last season, when Coastal Carolina bottomed out at 24-33 and snapped a streak of seven consecutive NCAA Regional appearances, this season has been a significant step forward regardless of how the regular-season Big South title shakes out this week.

“All I heard from last year was they had a real bad season and then all offseason was about getting better, getting better, getting better and working as a team and just coming [together] as one,” freshman second baseman Seth Lancaster said. “... We kind of lost it here a couple weeks ago, but this weekend we really came together and played how we were playing [earlier].”

Added junior outfielder Connor Owings: “All we can do is do what we have to do and that’s going out and trying to get three wins this weekend.”

This story was originally published May 13, 2015 at 8:12 PM with the headline "Chanticleers close regular season on road with plenty at stake."