South Carolina’s baseball team continued its shaky start to the 2026 baseball season by dropping the annual Palmetto Series to rival Clemson two games to one.

It was the third straight series win for the Tigers, who improved to (10-1) overall this season. That lone loss came in the first game of the rivalry, in which the Gamecocks won at home via a 7-0 shutout. 

Pitching was the story of that game. Clemson came in as a very respectable team from the plate, while the Gamecocks had trouble shutting teams down from the mound in previous losses. 

Josh Gunther, in his first collegiate start, gave the Gamecocks a huge shot of life. He pitched for seven innings, earning 10 strikeouts while giving up just three hits and one walk. 

Alex Valentin came on for the final two innings and continued the pitching show, throwing five strikeouts with no hits. 

South Carolina scored four of its seven runs in the third inning, thanks to a combination of hits and walks. The next two runs came in the sixth inning, and the final run was scored in the seventh. The team finished the game with four hits, three RBIs and five walks drawn. 

“When you pitch great, you got a chance to win, and our pitching was unbelievable,” head coach Paul Mainieri said. 

Game two was held at Segra Park, home of the Columbia Fireflies. It was another relatively calm game, with all the scoring coming in the third and fourth innings. 

The Gamecocks got on the board first after Will Craddock crossed home plate off an Ethan Lizama single. 

That 1-0 lead lasted half an inning as Clemson responded with a three-run deep shot out of the field. The Tigers scored one last run in the fourth and never looked back. 

“We just couldn’t muster enough against their pitcher,” Mainieri said. “There’s just not much you can do. The kid was in such a groove.”

The winner-take-all game three was on Clemson’s home field as the Tigers put up their biggest run total of the series in a 7-1 win. 

Scoring was more spread out in the final game, with Clemson scoring in the second, third, fourth and sixth innings. 

Like in the second game, South Carolina took the lead first but never scored again following a Clemson response. 

“Four hits a game for three straight days is obviously something that we got to get better at,”  Mainieri said. “You need a phenomenal starting pitching performance if you’re only going to get four hits in a game. We got that the first game. But, obviously, the second and third games, we didn’t get that kind of performance from our starting pitchers.”

With the series loss, South Carolina continued its sluggish start. Before the Clemson series, the Gamecocks suffered a midweek loss against Queen’s, which was previously 0-17 against power conference opponents. 

The team also lost to Army and Northern Kentucky earlier in the season. 

With SEC play on the horizon, the Gamecocks only have a few opportunities left to work through their problems and come out as a more complete team. 

“We’re just going to keep working hard,” Mainieri said. “It was our opportunity to prove to our fans that we were ready to compete at the highest level, and we didn’t do it. We had one phenomenal game. We had some spurts of good things that happened. We just didn’t do enough to beat a really good team. I’ll take responsibility for that.”