Gaston College sweeps DH with back-to-back late-inning rallies

Gaston College may not have played its best baseball of the season on Saturday.

But because the Rhinos have a extraordinarily resilient team, they forged a pair of dramatic comeback victories over Louisburg College to extend the nationally-ranked team's winning streak to seven games.

"We played really, really hard," said Gaston College coach Shohn Doty, whose team won 4-3 in the opener and 14-13 in the nightcap at Gastonia's Sims Legion Park. "All the credit in the world to our guys. They never give up. I thought they kinda gave us the first one but we took that second one."

The Rhinos, ranked No. 15 in the National Junior College Athletic Association poll, No. 9 in thejbb.net poll and No. 11 in the Dream Big Athletics poll, improved to 37-5 overall and 13-3 in Region 10 with the doubleheader sweep. Gaston College hosts Louisburg in a 1 p.m. doubleheader today to close out the four-game series.

Both games had a "you have to see this to believe it" quality to them.

In the opener, the Rhinos trailed 3-1 after 5 1/2 innings before scoring three runs in the bottom of the sixth.

Then Gaston College outdid itself in the nightcap with a 5-run rally in the bottom of the seventh after trailing 13-9. It marked the third walkoff win of this season and sixth in the last two years.

The Rhinos' patience at the plate paid off in both winning rallies as they drew four walks in the three-run sixth inning rally in the opener and five walks and a hit batter in the seventh inning rally in the nightcap.

Adam Quintero and Preston Hall each drew four walks on the day with Konni Durschlag, Wake Kelly, J.D. Yakubinis and Miller St. John each drawing two free passes each.

And outfielder Trey Truitt tied a school record in the nightcap with five hits; Teammate St. John had five hits in a March 19, 2022 game at USC Lancaster.

In the opener, Truitt's fielder's choice grounder knotted the score at 3 before Enrique Wood's sacrifice fly drove in Quintero with the winning run.

In the nightcap, Wood's bases-loaded hit by pitch tied the score at 13 and Truitt raced home with the game-winner on a wild pitch with Pierson Gunnell at the plate at none out in the inning.

Relievers won both games for Gaston College on a Saturday in which that unit endured some struggles.

Landon Carr pitched a scoreless sixth innings for the vicory in the opener with Evan Lewis picking up the save with scoreless seventh.

And Sawyer Sutton had a scoreless 2 1/3-inning stint for the win in the nightcap.

"We've got to get our bullpen fixed," said Doty, whose bullpen yielded eight walks, one hit batter and six hits in seven innings of work on Saturday. "Some guys threw really well out of there and some guys threw not very well.
"Now we've got to go out and finish the job tomorrow."

Louisburg, which has made 11 NJCAA World Series appearances since 1971, fell to 23-20 overall and 4-10 in Region 10.