Missed opportunities doom Chants in loss at College of Charleston

After watching his Coastal Carolina baseball team take a 4-2 loss against College of Charleston on Tuesday night, coach Gary Gilmore remained standing at the end of the dugout stoically while the players collected their equipment and filed out.

The scoreboard showed that the Chanticleers outhit the Cougars 10-5 and that the hosts committed three errors.

Yet it was the Chants feeling the sting of defeat yet again in the ballpark at Patriots Point, where they’ve now lost on their last six visits since their last win here in 2011.

“I think we need to do an exorcism before we ever come back here again because it’s really getting kind of stupid,” Gilmore said before heading to the bus.

The all-time series between the teams was dead even heading into the season at 18-all, but College of Charleston (14-7) has taken both meetings so far this spring – both in this ballpark – and has won the last five clashes overall.

The Chants (13-9), who had won six of their last seven games, will get two more chances against the Cougars back in Conway on April 12 and 20.

“We’ve lost six [straight] here and I’ve been a part of five of them,” senior outfielder Connor Owings said. “They’re always a great program, they always compete against us. We treat it as a rivalry between us. We respect each other – two very good programs and we just like to battle. They get the better of us here, but we play them two more times at home so hopefully we take those.”

The Cougars took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning against sophomore right-hander Zack Hopeck (0-1), getting a one-out double to left field by Tommy Richter, a bloop single to center by Morgan Phillips and then a two-run double by Bradley Jones to left-center.

That’s all Hopeck would allow, giving up just four hits over five innings with two strikeouts and no walks, but the Coastal Carolina offense was just out of sync on this night.

The Chants got one run back in the sixth inning on a sacrifice fly from junior G.K. Young to make it 2-1, but they left another runner stranded at second that inning, had a runner at second with one out in the seventh only to come up empty and left the bases loaded in the eighth.

In the meanwhile, the Cougars had pushed their lead to 4-1 on a two-run double from Clay Hunt in the bottom of the seventh.

Sophomore Billy Cooke and Owings then led off that eighth inning with back-to-back singles and two batters later Young followed with an RBI single up the middle to make it a 4-2 game. But junior Michael Paez struck out and after senior Tyler Chadwick reached on an error to load the bases Jones made a nice play down the first base line for the Cougars on a hopper from sophomore Seth Lancaster to end the frame.

The Chants went quietly in the ninth and finished with 11 strikeouts at the plate, which was the most frustrating part for Gilmore.

“At the end of the day they were able to pitch better than we were able to hit – simple as that. Too many strikeouts,” Gilmore said. “That’s been something we’ve been working on, and obviously I’ve got to coach better because we’re not very good at that part of it. That’s very frustrating. We put the ball in play 16 times (on non-hits) and they booted three of them. All we had to do is not strikeout and I think they would have beaten themselves, but we’re unable to do that and we’ve been unable to do that all year. That part’s frustrating.”

Eric Bauer (2-0) got the win for College of Charleston, allowing five hits over five scoreless innings with six strikeouts and no walks.

Young finished 2-for-3 with two RBIs for Coastal Carolina while Owings and senior Zach Remillard each went 2-for-4.

“Opportunities missed. We got 10 hits, but we just couldn’t get those two-out hits when we needed them,” Owings said. “They only had five, but I think those five hits were all with runners on except for a couple. That’s just how baseball is. You can outhit them, you can outplay them, but if you don’t get the hits when they matter you’re going to come up short.”

This story was originally published March 22, 2016 at 9:44 PM with the headline "Missed opportunities doom Chants in loss at College of Charleston."