No. 2 Gaston College rolls to final road regular season victory

Coming off a huge weekend series win over national power Florence-Darlington Tech, No. 2 Gaston College shook off a slow start to roll to a 15-7 win at Fayetteville Tech on Wednesday.

The Rhinos improved to 48-6 on the season as its offense erupted for 14 hits and drew 18 walks in a game Gaston College trailed 2-0 after two innings and 6-5 after three innings.

Freddie Oliver (3 hits, 2 home runs, 6 RBIs), Ben Karpowicz (2 hits, home run, 2 RBIs), Trevor Lucas (2 hits, 1 RBI) and Trent Murchison (2 hits) led the Rhinos' offense, which scored five runs in the third inning, two in the fourth, four in the sixth, one in the seventh and three in the ninth.

"Offensively, we did a great job all day," Gaston College coach Shohn Doty said. "Maybe we had a little bit of a slow start but we had traffic every inning. When we're at our best, we have the ability to put up crooked numbers and we did that a lot today."

Four pitchers combined on the eight-hitter with starter Isaac Williams going 2 1/3 innings and relievers Jason Johnson (2 1/3 innings), Austin Renn (3 1/3 innings) and Evan Vandenbosch (1 inning) finishing up. Renn yielded one hit, two walks and no runs to get the pitching victory.

"Austin hadn't thrown in a while but he came in and gave us good innings," Doty said of the freshman whose last outing came on March 19.

The Rhinos close out their regular season on Thursday at Gastonia's Sims Legion Park at 5 p.m. when it hosts Lincolnton's Combine Academy.

Before the game, the Rhinos will celebrate "Sophomore Day" when 20 players will be honored - Tyler Burke, Landon Carr, Seth Christmas, Calvert Clark, J.J. DeVos, Caleb Estes, Caleb Gallant, Gabe Hernandez, Karpowicz, Lucas, Wagner Morrissette, Andrew Muraco, Murchison, Oliver, Mason Smith, Sean Sullivan, Shane Thorson, Vandenbosch, Isaac Williams and Nathan Williams.

"We've got one regular season game today and it's 'Sophomore Day' and we want to honor those guys and send them out the right way and then take a week off and get ready for the Region 10 tournament," Doty said.