Sunday’s game against South Carolina featured a familiar recipe for the Auburn baseball team.

An early deficit. A handful of costly mistakes. A dramatic ninth-inning comeback that fell just short.

Sunday’s end result, a 7-6 win for 15th-ranked South Carolina, was equally familiar. The Gamecocks took a three-game sweep, Auburn’s first since the first weekend of Southeastern Conference play.

USC has won nine consecutive series against AU, dating back to 1998. This weekend’s series was closer than most, but the result was the same.

“Credit South Carolina,” Auburn coach Tom Slater said Sunday. “Every time we made a mistake on the mound, they hammered it. Every time we made a mistake defensively, they capitalized on it.”

The Gamecocks (25-10, 9-6 SEC) needed every run to put the game away. USC scored a run on a sacrifice fly in the top of the ninth inning to take a 7-3 lead.

Auburn nearly erased that margin in the bottom of the ninth.

Hunter Morris hit a three-run home run with one out in the ninth to pull AU within a run. The next batter, Brian Fletcher, reached on an error. But South Carolina reliever Brandon Todd struck out Ben Jones and forced Kevin Patterson to ground out to end the game.

Auburn (22-15, 6-9 SEC) put the tying run on base in the ninth inning in all three games. But Slater wasn’t interested in celebrating near-misses Sunday.

“I think we’re past the point of moral victories here,” he said. “I like our club and I want us to win. Our kids are putting themselves in position to win.”

Auburn held a 3-2 lead in the sixth inning, but USC catcher Kyle Enders’ RBI double off Auburn reliever Scott Shuman (2-2) tied the game at 3. The Gamecocks took the lead for good with two runs in the seventh and added another in the eighth before holding on in the ninth.

The sweep drops Auburn into a three-way tie for eighth place in the SEC standings with Alabama and LSU. The top eight finishers qualify for the SEC Tournament.

“We’re still right there in the hunt,” Slater said. “I have faith that this team is going to have a good second half. I feel really good about our chances for these next five SEC series and where we’ll be at the end of it.”

South Carolina had a scary moment in the seventh, when left fielder Andrew Crisp and center fielder Whit Merrifield collided while chasing a fly ball in shallow left-center.

Crisp caught the ball and hung on despite the jarring collision. He was able to get the ball into the infield to keep Auburn’s Trent Mummey from scoring.

But after getting rid of the ball, Crisp sank to his stomach and stayed down.

Crisp — attended by on-site medical staffers and surrounded by his parents, coaches and a cluster of USC teammates — spent at least 25 minutes lying on the field before being lifted into a stretcher and into a waiting ambulance.

USC head coach Ray Tanner said Crisp, who had back surgery in January, might have injured his back. But Tanner added that X-rays taken at East Alabama Medical Center were “negative.”

Merrifield, who stayed by Crisp’s side until he was lifted into the ambulance, said Crisp was able to speak and move his extremities.

“He wasn’t moving a lot,” Merrifield said. “He could wiggle his fingers and move his toes. It was obvious that it hurt him to move, but he could move, so that was good.”

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