Gaston College bounces back from DH sweep defeat with DH sweep victory

After a disappointing doubleheader sweep defeat on Saturday, Gaston College head coach Shohn Doty was confident his team would respond with a better effort on Sunday.

Did they ever.

The Rhinos made a dramatic rally to win 7-6 in the opener then dominated in an 11-5 victory in the nightcap over perennial Region 10 power Spartanburg Methodist.

"We talked about what happened last night and knew we didn't play very well," Gaston College coach Shohn Doty said of his team's 7-6 and 10-5 losses in a rare doubleheader sweep defeat. "Early today, it didn't look that great but the kids were resilient and ended up having a good day."

The Rhinos, ranked No. 11 in the current National Junior College Athletic Association poll, No. 7 in thejbb.net poll and No. 8 in the Dream Big Athletics poll, collected 15 hits and took advantage of nine walks and eight Spartanburg Methodist fielding errors.

Gaston College improved to 32-5 overall and 9-3 in Division I of Region 10 while dropping Spartanburg Methodist to 21-15 and 9-5.

The host Pioneers, whose head coach Tim Wallace recently surpassed 1,300 career victories, lead Region 10 in championships won (14), runner-up finishes (11) and NJCAA World Series appearances (11).

Trailing 6-0 after five innings in the opener, Gaston College scored four times in the sixth and three times in the seventh to steal the series momentum.

"Evan (Lewis) was electric in the seventh inning and he kind of set the tone for the rest of the day," Doty said. "Then we jumped on them in the second game and it was good to see how well we can play and how well we bounced back.
"At the end of the day, we wanted to win the series. But after what we went through last night, it says a lot about our guys to bounce back, split the series."

J.D. Yakubinis had a RBI double and Trey Truitt a 2-run home run in the sixth and Adam Quintero drew a bases-loaded walk for a RBI and Truitt's RBI groundout in the seventh.

Reliever Sawyer Sutton threw two scoreless innings for the victory and Lewis retired three of the four batters he faced in the seventh, including two by strikeouts, for a save.

In the nightcap, Derek Vartanian threw a complete game 9-hitter with five strikeouts and his offense gave him an 11-1 lead after 4 1-2 innings before the Rhinos cruised to the victory.

Quintero (3 hits, 4 RBIs, double, home run) and Truitt (2 hits, 1 RBI) led the offense in the second game.

"I was proud of our guys for staying reslient," Doty said. "We haven't lost a series in conference yet in two years. We talked about that before the game. So I'm proud of what we accomplished in a really tough environment. We'll go home and try to get better on Monday at practice and get ready for a really tough team in Patrick & Henry on Tuesday."

The Rhinos visit Patrick & Henry Community College on Tuesday at 4 p.m. in a rematch of a 12-11 walkoff Gaston College home win last Tuesday.

The next home series is Friday and Saturday against Region 10 Division I opponent USC Union. Friday's doubleheader begins at 3 p.m. with Saturday's doubleheader set to start at 1 p.m.