Gaston College baseball goes through highs and lows of tournament baseball on Sunday

Gaston College's baseball team went through the highs and lows of postseason tournament baseball on Sunday at Lexington County, S.C., Stadium.

A few hours after taking a thrilling 6-4 walkoff win over USC Lancaster on Joey Nicholson's walkoff two-run home run in the Rhinos' first Region 10 Divion I tournament game, they lost 10-8 to a rallying No. 9-ranked Florence-Darlington Tech.

The Rhinos (40-14-1) next play an elimination game in the six-team tournament on 5 p.m. Monday against the winner of Monday afternoon's USC Sumter-USC Union game.

"Honestly, I thought we carried the momentum from the first game into the second game of the day," Gaston College coach Shohn Doty said. "We jumped on them early. But we've been talking about the lack of pitching depth and it showed up in there and we just couldn't get to the right guy in the right spot. It's just real disappointing.
"We've got to wash that one off. We had a quiet bus ride home and we're going to have to figure out how to get the energy level back up and play a game to get back to the championship game tomorrow."

In Sunday morning's resumption of a game that was suspended due to rain on Saturday afternoon, Gaston College got seven innings of 10-strikeout pitching from starter Drake Purvis and solid offensive contributions from Brandon Crabtree (2 hits, home run, 1 RBI), Isaac Armstrong (2 hits) and Jackson Toberman (2-run double) before Nicholson's 1-out walkoff home run in the bottom of the ninth inning was decisive.

Reliever Nick Diehl picked up the win.

In Sunday evening's winner's bracket final of the double-elimination tournament, Nicholson (3 hits, 2 home runs, 4 RBIs) stayed hot with the help of teammates David Nicks (2 hits, double) and Koy Swanson (2 hits 2 RBIs) to build leads of 6-0 and 8-1 before the top-seeded Stingers rallied for five runs in the seventh inning and four in the ninth to take the come-from-behind victory.

Starter Conner Frail went 6 1/3 innings before the bullpen yielded two hits and two walks in the final 1 2/3 innings.

"A tournament like this has it ups and downs and we're going to have to have some guys step up out of that bullpen," Doty said. "We're down to 10 healthy arms. There's no excuses. The guys that are healthy have got to go pitch - and pitch better.
"Our goal now is to get back to the finals and give ourselves a chance."

The Region 10 winner will host the National Junior College Athletic Association East District best-of-three tournament this weekend.