Lancaster key to Chants’ incredible run in breakout season

It will go down as one of the biggest hits in Coastal Carolina baseball history, and that reality was still sinking in with sophomore second baseman Seth Lancaster a few days ago.

His two-out, two-run sinking line drive Tuesday that the umpire ruled just barely fell in front of NC State right fielder Brock Deatherage’s glove is the reason the Chanticleers are here this week in the NCAA super regionals preparing to open a best-of-three series at Louisiana State on Saturday night.

Not the only reason, but the most direct, and as game-winning hits go Lancaster’s was about as dramatic as they get as the Chants completed their comeback from a two-run ninth-inning deficit after a 14-hour overnight rain delay to beat the host Wolfpack 7-5 and advance to the super regionals for the first time since 2010.

“I’ve talked to my mom, dad, brother about it and everybody’s been telling me all this and that. I’m not so much worried about me being down in history, I’m worried about the 2016 team being talked about like the 2010 team, how special a group we have and the bond we have,” Lancaster said a couple days after the biggest swing of his collegiate career. “It’s the most fun I’ve ever had coming to the park every day, and I don’t want to take that for granted with these guys.”

For that matter, Lancaster hasn’t taken anything for granted since feeling the pressure that his starting job at second base might be in jeopardy five weeks ago.

As the Chants (47-16) were coming off their toughest weekend of the season, a three-game sweep at Georgia Tech, the coaches moved some players around in practice the following week and had senior first baseman Tyler Chadwick working out at second base.

Part of it was because Lancaster had been scuffling at that point with the bat and in the field, and another motivation was trying to find a way to get sophomore first baseman Kevin Woodall Jr. – who had hit a pinch-hit grand slam at Georgia Tech – into the lineup.

However serious a consideration it was, it got Lancaster’s attention and he has since been among the Chants’ hottest hitters with a team-best .407 batting average, .485 on-base percentage and .712 slugging percentage since the beginning of May while continuing a breakout season.

He’s 24-for-59 over those last 18 games with six doubles and four home runs.

“I have no idea if it was a real thing, but it worked,” he says now of feeling the pressure to perform. “I didn’t say much. I was messing with Chadwick the whole time about it, how I was going to take my spot back that weekend. I had a pretty decent weekend up there and took my spot back. I don’t even know if it was a thing, but I made it a thing in my head.”

Lancaster went 5-for-12 with a home run and double in a three-game sweep the next weekend at Liberty and hasn’t looked back since.

“It’s not that we had given up on him, it’s just trying to get maybe a better piece at that moment in time into the lineup,” Chants coach Gary Gilmore said of tinkering in practice. “If that’s how he took it, he’s responded extremely positively and has been one of our very best players on our whole team since that point in time.”

Lancaster has thrived on finding motivation from obstacles or challenges, in general.

That’s how he found his way to Coastal Carolina in the first place.

A standout at Hanahan High School, he had committed to South Carolina prior to his sophomore season before later having his scholarship offer taken away, as he tells it.

“I was committed to South Carolina two weeks before my sophomore year of high school. That was right off their back-to-back national championships so I couldn’t say no. They offered me a scholarship, [and I said], ‘Yes sir, I’d love to come,’” he said. “And I was coming back the June before my senior year and Coach [Chad] Holbrook, he told me and my dad to make a run through Columbia on my way back from Atlanta. He told me I wasn’t good enough to play at his program on a scholarship, so I told him I’d think about it and I called him a couple weeks later and told him I’d like to go somewhere else and try my chances. [Coastal Carolina pitching coach Drew] Thomas saw me at a showcase, and here we are going to LSU.”

Whatever the reasons that led to the Gamecocks changing their mind on Lancaster, he says he wouldn’t change anything at this point.

“It crushed me. Being from Charleston, South Carolina has always been a big team,” he said. “... I went in there, my travel coach told me what to expect, but I didn’t want to expect it, I didn’t want to believe it and then he told me and I just took it. I’ve got a chip on my shoulder and it made me who I am today. It made me a better person, a better man on and off the field. That’s what I needed. I’m happy it happened, I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

Nor would the Chants. In his first season as Coastal Carolina’s full-time second baseman, Lancaster is batting .310 overall with seven homers, nine doubles, 34 RBIs and 42 runs scored. He’s also stolen 15 bases in 16 attempts.

That’s even more impressive considering he wasn’t even locked in to that role when the spring started, with freshman Cameron Pearcey starting the season opener at second.

Lancaster gives Pearcey credit for pushing him to work even harder and providing him yet another motivational boost to bring out the player he has become.

“I was telling my dad this, Cameron Pearcey is probably deserving of more credit than I am for my season because of what he did this spring,” Lancaster said. “He came back in the spring and started opening day and made me work my butt off even more. He’s one of our hardest workers. I give that kid all the credit in the world, and he’s going to be a great player for us in the coming years.”

Pearcey might find his place elsewhere on the diamond next season, though, with Lancaster seemingly seizing control of second base for the near future.

“Especially here the last 30 games, he’s extremely exceeded where I thought he would be, personally,” Gilmore said. “In all honesty on a lot of teams he’d be hitting way higher up in the order than where he hits on this team.”

Lancaster was in the right place in the order on Tuesday, though.

After the Chants and NC State had their regional finale halted in the ninth inning Monday night as Coastal Carolina loaded the bases with one out in a strong downpour, play resumed Tuesday with the Wolfpack still leading 5-3.

By the time Lancaster came up, it was a 5-4 game with two outs, and his low liner to right had players and fans from both teams holding their breath until the umpire signaled that Deatherage had trapped the ball while sliding in to try to make the catch.

Deatherage would tell reporters after the game that he believed in the moment that he had made the catch. The umpire disagreed.

Lancaster, meanwhile, says he’s watched the replay “probably too much” and he seconds the ump’s decision that ball dropped in front of the glove.

“Yeah, it did for sure. Even if it didn’t I’d say it did,” he joked this week.

As soon as Lancaster got on the bus after that game, he called his parents, who weren’t able to be there for the finish Tuesday.

“My parents couldn’t make it, my dad had to go back to work on Tuesday, so the first thing I wanted to do was call mom and dad,” he said. “I got on the bus, had 20 text messages, however many Facebook and Twitter notifications. I made sure to call mom and dad, got a little excited and almost got [emotional] when I talked to them, but I just wanted them to be the first people I talked to after the game.

“My brother texted me, I looked at the time and it was about the time I got the hit, and then he told me afterwards he was in the break room at work and he flipped the table, broke the table and messed up the break room. It was real cool to see my parents and brother get excited.”

Not to mention everybody else associated with Coastal Carolina baseball.

That hit, that inning and that comeback will be talked about for years to come, but Lancaster isn’t caught up in any of that right now.

Because of that swing, he and the Chants are still playing and just two wins away from the program’s first-ever College World Series berth.

“I’m not so much worried about me,” he said. “I’m worried about helping my team win and the run we’ve been on is amazing.”

This story was originally published June 11, 2016 at 8:13 AM with the headline "Lancaster key to Chants’ incredible run in breakout season."