By MONTE DUTTON
Every time another unexpected event happens, whether it lives in fame or infamy, compels me to start reciting again.
One year the football team won a game one week by 65 points and lost the next week by 72.
Last year a descendant of that team, scholarshipless, stunned scholarshipped Wofford, which later upset the No. 2 team in the nation.
In a particularly magical year for PC, 2021, the baseball team, fourth-seeded and barely in the Big South tournament, won three straight games, two of them over top-seeded Campbell, and qualified for the NCAA regionals.
As the faithful may recall, 2021 was the year of Tommy Spangler’s firing, Kevin Kelley’s hiring and the cooking of football games without the usual utensils.
The men’s basketball team finished the 2022-23 campaign with the nation’s longest active losing streak, 18 games, then began last season with an upset of Vanderbilt of the Southeastern Conference.
The women’s team swept the Big South Tournament after beginning it as the No. 5 seed. Then the Blue Hose ended Sacred Heart’s 15-game winning streak with an upset in the play-in game of the NCAA tournament. The national champion administered the Gamecock reality shot, which wasn’t unusual for the University of South Carolina in the tournament.
This year’s baseball team won eight out of nine conference games and soared into a tie for first place.
This was a perfect PC setup for Tuesday’s calamity in Spartanburg.
Great Caesar’s ghost.
Presbyterian College’s baseball team has every reason to conserve its resources, particularly pitching, for Big South weekend games. The Blue Hose are tied for first place in the league. Wofford is not in the conference but, rather, the Southern.
But 24-3?
Wofford (25-10) dropped that number on PC in a Tuesday-evening in a game at Spartanburg’s King Field with 168 eyewitnesses. The Terriers “went yard” (homered) six times. Right fielder David Wiley went deep twice.
The high – or low – point was Wofford’s 15-run fifth inning. The Terriers led 7-2 in the four innings previous to it and 2-1 in the one after it.
This, with names removed to protect the innocent, was the Wofford fifth:
Homer. Popup. Homer. Homer. Hit by pitch. Pitching change. Triple. Single. Triple. Walk. Single. Pitching change. Walk. Double. Homer. Homer. Strikeout. Hit by pitch. Double. Strikeout.
Before Tuesday, the Blue Hose won six of their last seven games.
By rules of scoring of which I am unfamiliar, Dylan Rhadans, who pitched the first three innings, was declared the winner. Of the losing pitcher, there was little doubt. Tristan McGregor (3-3) labored for three innings, giving up six hits and seven runs (four earned) with a walk and two strikeouts.
He was the best of the bunch. The five Hose hurlers who followed him all gave up at least two runs.
Presbyterian (19-18, 10-2 Big South) takes on High Point (19-18, 8-4) in North Carolina on Friday at 6 p.m., Saturday at 4 and Sunday at 1.
Three Terriers – Wiley, second baseman Brice Martinez and shortstop Jack Renwick – banged out three hits apiece. Three had two … too.
Wofford divided among themselves 19 hits, the aforementioned six homers, four doubles and two triples. Renwick drove in six runs, Wiley five and Martinez four.
Shortstop Brody Fahr was the lone Blue Hose with two hits. Center fielder Joel Dragoo and pinch-hitter Mikal Conner doubled.
Take a look at the box here. It’s a keeper.
Daniel Eagen is Big South Starting Pitcher of the Week for the third consecutive week and fourth time this season.
It’s the first time in program history that a player has achieved four total or three consecutive Big South honors.
Lleyton Renner finished 10th in the Big South Championship for mens golf, and he again leads the Blue Hose into this year’s tournament at the Ocean Island course, appropriately on Fripp Island.
The Blue Hose have never finished better than fourth (2008).
PC has a veteran contingent. Thomas Hollingsworth and Jimmy McCollum are fifth-year players. Renner and Columb Knight are seniors. Jack Wofford is a junior.
Sarah Boteler and Maddie Peake finished 17th and 20th, respectively, and PC finished seventh in the Big South Championship in women’s golf, contested at the same course where the men next play.
The Blue Hose shot 933, 38 strokes off champion Charleston Southern’s pace. Odette Garcia of the Buccaneers won the individual title at even-par 216. Boteler shot 230 and Peake 231.
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