Carolina, Bama to play for SEC crown

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Posted 9:04AM on Sunday, May 26, 2002

HOOVER, ALABAMA - South Carolina flirted with disaster in the ninth inning before closer Blake Taylor got Blake Gill to ground out to second base to leave the bases loaded in a dramatic 5-4 victory over LSU Saturday night. The top-seeded Gamecocks will face Western Division champion Alabama in Sunday's Southeastern Conference tournament championship game. It didn't come easily. ``It's LSU. They're one of the best teams in the country, and we knew they were coming,'' South Carolina coach Ray Tanner said. ``There's 27 outs. Fortunately, we were able to get them.'' South Carolina (48-13), who had never made the title game, stayed alive with a 10-8 victory over the Tigers earlier Saturday. Trailing 5-2, LSU (40-19) loaded the bases with nobody out. Freshman starter Aaron Rawl left with two men on and Taylor allowed a single to load the bases, then walked home a pair of runs. Taylor then walked home a pair of runs. Then Sean Barker hit a grounder to shortstop Drew Meyer, who leaped over Wally Pontiff's high slide and threw late to first. Umpire Ken Couch ruled that Pontiff interfered on the play, giving South Carolina a double play and forcing J.C. Holt back to third base. ``I looked at my shortstop's body language, and it was obvious he thought it was an automatic double play,'' Tanner said. ``A lot of umpires wouldn't make that call.'' Taylor, who leads the nation with 19 saves, then intentionally walked Matt Heath to load the bases again. Blake Gill grounded past first but Yaron Peters briefly bobbled the ball before recovering and tossing it to Taylor for the final out. Steve Thomas hit a three-run homer and Rawl (5-1) struck out eight before leaving with two men on. Rawl's longest previous outing was 4-1/3 innings. LSU hadn't lost two games on the same day since Kentucky swept a doubleheader in 1991. The Tigers went on to win a national championship that year. The Tigers' Bo Pettit (8-7) struck out eight in eight innings. Thomas' homer to left-center in the fifth staked the Gamecocks to a 3-2 lead. Landon Powell opened the inning with a single and Kevin Melillo reached on an error. South Carolina added to its lead with a two-run seventh. Meyer's school-record 105th hit of the season was an RBI triple and he scored on a wild pitch by Bo Pettit (8-7). The Tigers had made the title game the past two years In the first game, Meyer was 4-for-5 and scored three times and Thomas added a two-run double in the eighth. South Carolina scored four runs in the eighth, three of them unearned, capped by back-to-back doubles by Meyer and Thomas. Meyer scored three runs and tied the school record with his 104th hit of the season. Matt Campbell (3-2) picked up the win, going 3-2/3 innings in relief and allowing two runs, one earned. John Wesley, who had thrown 3-2/3 innings all season, pitched the final two innings for his first save. The Gamecocks got a boost from the return of SEC Player of the Year Yaron Peters. Peters, who hadn't played since pulling a hamstring in the regular season finale, had a two-run double in the third. Justin Harris was 3-for-4 with an RBI and two runs scored. He also scored from second on a fly ball to deep center field which was caught by a diving David Raymer. LSU's Matt Heath hit his fifth triple and was 3-for-4, driving in two runs. Jon Zeringue added a solo homer, his second. The teams combined for 24 hits and neither starter lasted more than four innings.