USC Upstate added two more Big South Conference baseball honors on Monday, with reliever Max Bianchini and freshman Jacob Kirby sweeping weekly awards after the Spartans’ final regular-season stretch. The athletics department said Bianchini was named Big South Relief Pitcher of the Week and Kirby was named Big South Freshman of the Week, giving the program another set of conference accolades as it moves from a hot finish into tournament week.
The numbers behind the awards explain the timing. Bianchini made two appearances last week and earned the win in both, covering 5.0 scoreless innings with seven strikeouts, according to the athletics recap. One outing came against Clemson, and the other came during the final Northern Kentucky series in Spartanburg. Kirby also worked twice during the week, totaling 7.0 innings while allowing just one run and striking out five. The freshman picked up the win in Saturday’s regular-season finale, which capped a closing stretch in which the Spartans kept finding ways to finish games late.
The schedule context matters for local fans because these were not empty end-of-season numbers. May included a win over Clemson at Fifth Third Park in Spartanburg, followed by the closing series against Northern Kentucky at Cleveland S. Harley Park. Those games gave the team momentum entering the Big South Baseball Championship, and the awards served as a league-level acknowledgment that the pitching staff drove much of that surge. The program said this is the third straight season in which it has produced a weekly award winner after the final weekend of the regular season.
For a Spartanburg program trying to carry form into postseason play, the dual recognition does more than add plaques. It shows the team finished the regular season with multiple arms in rhythm at the same time, a trait that can decide tournament games quickly. The home crowd in Spartanburg has watched Bianchini and Kirby handle high-leverage innings in different roles, and the conference’s latest honors suggest both pitchers are peaking at the right moment.
