No. 25 Gaston College has hot hitting day in Wednesday victory

No. 25 Gaston College's baseball team improved to 31-11-1 on Wednesday with an impressive 15-3 win at Fayetteville Tech that was shortened to seven innings by the "mercy" rule.

It was the Rhinos' 17th game scoring 10 or more runs and their fourth victory in the last five contests.

"We're 31-11-1 and trending in the right direction," Gaston College coach Shohn Doty said. "We've just got to make sure we continue to play the way we've been playing. We want to go into the conference tournament in May pitching and hitting at a high level."

The Rhinos are in second place of the Region 10 Division I standings with nine of their last 10 games in conference play starting with a three-game series at USC Union that begins with a 1 p.m. Saturday doubleheader and concludes with a 1 p.m. Sunday game.

In Wednesday's victory, Gaston College had 10 hits and drew 10 walks and two hit batters as it overcame an early 2-0 deficit with one run in the third inning, four in the fourth, three in the fifth and sixth and four in the seventh.

Brandon Crabtree (3 hits, double, 4 RBIs), David Nicks (2 hits, double, 3 RBIs), Sam Dansky (double, 3 RBIs) and Ty Corbin (1 hit, 2 walks, 2 RBIs) led the offense and five pitchers combined on a four-hitter with nine strikeouts highlighted by scoreless efforts from relievers Travis Smith (2 innings), Tucker Holland (1 inning) and Alex Sobol (1 inning).

"I thought we played well," Doty said. "We're starting to find a little bit of rhythm offensively. We did a lot better job of putting the ball in play with two strikes.
"I thought our bullpen was really, really good. They came in hitting .300 and had stolen 130 bases. For us to run five guys out there and hold them to three runs, especially when we kind of gifted them with two runs in the first, was really good."