Vanderbilt opened the game with a burst of six runs in the first inning, establishing an early 7‑0 advantage that set the tone for the night.
The Commodores added to their lead in the second frame, capitalizing on a flurry of six singles, a fielding miscue and a daring double‑steal that brought home Rustan Rigdon.
A solitary run in the third extended the gap, but South Carolina answered in the fourth when KJ Scobey’s gap‑splitting double drove in Talmadge LeCroy and Jake Randolph, cutting the margin to 7‑2.
Will Craddock followed with an RBI single, narrowing the score to 7‑3 as the Gamecocks began to rally.
In the seventh inning, Carolina mounted a two‑run surge; Dawson Harman walked, stole second and scored on Luke Yuhasz’s RBI double, and Yuhasz later crossed the plate on Tyler Bak’s single to the gap in right.
Vanderbilt sealed the contest with a pair of runs in the bottom of the eighth, pulling the final tally to 9‑5.
Alex Valentin took the mound for the Commodores, laboring through five innings and 105 pitches while recording four strikeouts and allowing four earned runs.
Key contributors included Bak, who finished with two hits, and Scobey, who drove in two runs and now sits tied for fifth in the SEC with 16 doubles.
SEC Tournament Outlook
The loss leaves South Carolina with the No. 15 seed heading into the SEC Tournament, a positioning that could be secured with a Missouri defeat to Texas on Friday; the two teams will meet Saturday at 1 p.m. CT, a game that will stream on SEC Network Plus.