Thursday’s Game: South Carolina 6, LSU 5

Friday’s Game: 6 p.m. / SECN+

 Maybe LSU was getting too cute.

The No. 1-ranked Tigers tried to sneak through the early weekend’s opening Southeastern Conference series game against lowly South Carolina Thursday night without either of their top two starting pitchers.

Mixed results, there.

But it was normally reliable closer Zac Cowan who gave up a run in the eighth and two more in the ninth as South Carolina finally scored on a wild pitch to beat the Tigers 6-5 in walk-off fashion.

The Gamecocks (28-26, 6-22 SEC) broke their seven-game conference losing streak to give head coach Paul Mainieri a win against his former LSU team.

“We didn’t play great tonight but you can’t dwell on it,” LSU coach Jay Johnson said. “With the postseason approaching, you have to move on to the next game. We addressed a few of the mistakes we made in the game and now we have to get ready for tomorrow.”

LSU (40-13, 17-11) missed an opportunity to move into a second place tie in the SEC with Arkansas, which lost 10-6 to Tennessee but remained a game ahead of the Tigers in the standings.

LSU broke a 3-3 tie and took a 5-3 lead in the top of the eighth, but South Carolina got one back in the bottom of the inning on a leadoff triple by Henry Kaczmar, followed by Kennedy Jones’ RBI single.

LSU left two runners on in the top of the ninth before the Gamecocks’ KJ Scobey tied the game on a one-out home run in the bottom of the ninth.

No. 9 hitter Jase Wolter followed with a triple, then a hit batter and intentional walk loaded the bases with one out.

First baseman Jared Jones got the second out on diving catch of a line drive. But Cowan then unleashed a low and outside wild pitch in the dirt that allowed pinch runner Dalton Mashore to trot in from third with the game winner.

Before the Thursday meltdown, LSU was 27-0 when leading after eight innings this season.

The Tigers will have their co-aces to start the final two games with Kade Anderson (6-1, 3.66) pitching Friday night and Anthony Eyanson (8-2, 2.91) in the Saturday game to finish the regular season.

LSU led 2-0 three batters into the game on Daniel Dickinson’s 2-run homer in the first inning, but the Tigers struggled for runs thereafter.

They outhit South Carolina 11-8, but stranded nine base runners, hit into two double plays and had two runners thrown out at third base, both in the fifth inning.

The Gamecocks were hitless until the sixth inning, but had plenty of base runners.

Conner Ware got the surprise start for the Tigers and his first pitch of the game hit a batter and he walked the third batter he faced.

He got out of that scoreless with a double play, but walked the bases loaded without recording an out in the second inning.

Jaden Noot relieved and got out of the jam with just one run on a sacrifice fly.

He held the Gamecocks scoreless until the sixth when USC got its first hit on an infield single, followed by Kaczmar’s RBI triple.

Chase Shores relieved and gave up a sacrifice fly that tied the game 3-3.

That held until the eighth when the Tigers got a pair of runs on Steven Milam’s sacrifice fly and an RBI single by Chris Stanfield.