This time, there would be no collapse

For the second consecutive day in the Southeastern Conference baseball tournament, the South Carolina Gamecocks built a four-run lead.

But unlike in Wednesday’s opening round, when a ninth-inning meltdown led to a heartbreaking loss to LSU, the Gamecocks held onto their lead Thursday and eventually extended it, defeating Florida, 11-3, to stay alive in the double-elimination tournament.

“I’m really proud of these guys to bounce back like that,” South Carolina coach Ray Tanner said. (Wednesday’s) loss was tough. To be able to respond and come back and win this game says a lot about their character. We’re very delighted to stay and get a chance to play again.”

South Carolina will play either LSU or Vanderbilt at 4 p.m. today in another elimination game. Tanner said right-hander Blake Cooper (5-5) will probably start for the Gamecocks.

After falling behind 1-0 in the first inning, South Carolina (38-20) answered with a five-run second inning that included several clutch hits off Florida starter Billy Bullock (4-4). The Gamecocks had four singles and a double in the inning, and all of them came with two strikes, including two on 0-2 pitches.

“They had five two-strike hits in one inning. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that,” Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “We gave up a leadoff walk and then back-to-back 0-2 hits. That’s tough.”

Still, with seven innings to play and the memory of LSU’s four-run ninth inning fresh in their mind, the Gamecocks knew they couldn’t relax even with a 5-1 lead. And sure enough, Florida (34-22) had a chance to tie the game in the seventh with two out and two men on base in a 6-3 game.

That is when South Carolina starter Nick Godwin (7-3) threw his final pitch of the day, and it was a good one. Godwin got Florida first baseman Brandon McArthur – who already had two RBI in the game – to pop out to shortstop.

“I had tried to stay in on him the whole game,” Godwin said. “We noticed in his last at-bat that he turned on one and took a good swing at it. So we decided to throw a slider on the first pitch, and he got under it and popped it up.”

Mike Cisco, who is normally a starter, then came in and put aside the Gamecocks’ bullpen woes for a day by allowing only one hit over the final two innings.

“Our bullpen has certainly been inconsistent,” Tanner said. “But Cisco is a guy who is going to bulldog. I liked the fact I knew what I was going to get when he went out there. He’s going to compete as hard as anybody. I was glad to see he had two quality innings for us and kept anything from rallying on the other side.”

Cisco, meanwhile, gave much of the credit to Godwin.

“(Wednesday) just left us with a bad feeling in our stomachs leaving the ballpark,” Cisco said. “Godwin came out here and did what he needed to do. He put the team on his back. I was just trying to keep his game going when I got in.”

The Gamecocks put the game away in the eighth with another five-run inning, capped by Justin Smoak’s three-run homer. The hit gave Smoak 60 career home runs — seventh-most in SEC history — and 200 RBI. Both marks are South Carolina team records.

“The records are nice, but the only thing I really care about is winning ballgames,” Smoak said. “And this one was a big win for us.”