After playing just two games in eight days, Appalachian State University baseball begins a challenging five-games-in-six-days stretch with mid-week contests versus South Carolina and ETSU. The Mountaineers travel to No. 1 South Carolina for a 7 p.m. game on Tuesday and return home to host ETSU at 6 p.m. Wednesday (please note change from original 4 p.m. game time).

The week begins with another opportunity for Appalachian State (8-16) to knock off a nationally ranked opponent when it visits top-ranked South Carolina (24-3). Tuesday's contest is Appalachian's ninth of the season against a top-25 team but perhaps its most challenging. Ranked No. 1 in this week's Collegiate Baseball newspaper poll, the Gamecocks are 18-0 in non-conference games this season and have won 33-straight non-conference games at Carolina Stadium, dating all the way back to a 3-2 loss to Liberty on Feb. 17, 2013.

Appalachian State is just 1-10 all-time against South Carolina, with the Mountaineers' lone victory over the Gamecocks coming on March 11, 1989 (a 15-8 triumph at USC's former home stadium, Sarge Frye Field). Tuesday's game is Appalachian's second at the Gamecocks' new home, Carolina Stadium, which opened in 2009. In their only previous visit to Carolina Stadium, the Mountaineers jumped out to a 4-0 lead on the No. 3-ranked Gamecocks on March 14, 2012. South Carolina battled back to take a 6-4 lead and App State's upset bid fell just short when USC center fielder Evan Marzilli made a fabulous running catch at the wall to steal what might have been a game-tying two-run home run by Daniel Kassouf in the ninth inning.

Just like it did in its last trip to South Carolina, Appalachian State will send left-hander Jeffrey Springs (1-0, 3.38 ERA) to the mound for Tuesday's game. Springs made the third start of his career when the Mountaineers played at USC in 2012 and did not figure in the decision in the 6-4 loss. Now a member of Appalachian's weekend rotation, Springs gets the mid-week assignment after his regularly scheduled start versus UNCG on Sunday was canceled due to inclement weather.

South Carolina counters with right-hander Evan Beal (0-0, 0.00 ERA), who was the Gamecocks' closer when the teams last met in 2012 but is making only his second start of the season due to a back injury that kept him out of action for the first six weeks of the campaign. Beal returned to action last Wednesday versus Coastal Carolina and tossed four hitless innings in USC's 4-0 win.

On Wednesday, Appalachian State returns home to face ETSU in the makeup of a game that was snowed out last Wednesday. Appalachian moved to 5-1 this season at Beaver Field and Jim and Bettie Smith Stadium by sweeping a weather-shortened two-game Southern Conference series from UNCG this past weekend.

ETSU is 13-13 on the season after taking 2-of-3 Atlantic Sun Conference games from Northern Kentucky this past weekend.

Appalachian State and ETSU have squared off 130 times since 1955, which makes the Bucs' the Mountaineers' second-most common opponent (behind only Western Carolina). Despite Appalachian's comfortable 74-55-1 advantage in the series, ETSU has won four of the last five meetings and App State has not beaten the Bucs at Smith Stadium since a 14-4 triumph in 2010.

Neither club has settled on a starting pitcher for Wednesday night's game. Like Appalachian, ETSU travels to face a Southeastern Conference opponent on Tuesday when it visits in-state foe Tennessee.