Winthrop baseball falls in close game to USC, but Eagles still have NCAA hopes intact
Winthrop baseball coach Tom Riginos stepped out of his dugout in Winthrop Ballpark on Wednesday night and scanned a box score.
He saw a lot of stats he liked on the page. Eight Winthrop hits. No Winthrop errors. Over 1,200 fans in attendance. He was reminded that only three Winthrop pitchers were sent to the mound — and that one of whom, junior transfer Nate Butcher, had one of his best performances to date as an Eagle and “kept us in the ball game,” Riginos said.
Riginos didn’t like seeing the final score, a 5-2 loss to South Carolina. But otherwise, he was pleased.
All of his team’s goals were still within reach, after all.
“Nobody likes losing, nobody can accept losing,” Riginos told The Herald postgame. He added, “But if we play this way this weekend (against Big South opponent Presbyterian College), we’re going to end up being where we want to be.”
The Eagles put together one of their most “consistent” efforts of the season on Wednesday, Riginos said. And they gave a team that is on pace to sneak into the NCAA tournament with an at-large bid a real challenge in the process.
They fielded well. Their pitchers, according USC head coach Mark Kingston, kept USC “off-balance all night.” They were aggressive on offense — thanks mostly to a 2-for-5 day from CJ Conrad, a 2-for-4 day from Joey Tepper and a 2-for-3 day from Joseph Szvetitz.
They kept the score locked at 2-2 from the bottom of the third to the top of the eighth, before the Gamecocks took the lead for good.
And all that made Wednesday’s performance, despite it resulting in a loss, one that could prove to be a springboard for Winthrop’s NCAA tournament dreams.
“All of our goals,” Riginos said, “are still in front of us.”
Winthrop was consistent on Wednesday. And consistency hasn’t been a given for Winthrop this year. The Eagles started the year 2-0 before losing nine of their next 10 games. At one point in the season, they won six in a row. After Wednesday’s loss, they’re back on a three-game skid.
But there’s time to steady the ship.
The Eagles now sit at 13-24 overall and 7-5 in the Big South. They’re fifth in the conference — behind Campbell (11-1), USC Upstate (10-5), Longwood (8-4) and UNC Asheville (7-5, 13-20). That means that if the regular season ended today, they’d be one of the six teams invited to play in the Big South’s double-elimination end-of-year tournament with the chance to win it all and make the NCAAs.
Winthrop, too, still has several big conference series to play. The Eagles play PC this weekend on the road. They then play top-seeded Campbell at home May 6-8, then NC A&T at home May 13-15 and then UNC Asheville on the road May 19-21.
Before leaving the field on Wednesday, Riginos reiterated that his team’s goal of getting to the NCAA tournament is possible. He then took a final look at the box score folded in his hand.
“As a coach, you gotta look at the big picture,” he said. “And we played well. You’re not always going to win because you play so many games in baseball. But it’s about being consistent. And that’s what we were tonight.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated how many teams made the Big South’s double-elimination end-of-season tournament. Six teams do, not eight.
This story was originally published April 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
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