Pitching, timely hitting lead No. 11 Gaston College to non-league victory

No. 11 Gaston College entered Wednesday's game at Kinston's historic Grainger Stadium against Bryant & Stratton with 16 games of double digit scoring.

The Rhinos endured rare offensive struggles but a timely hitting and clutch pitching carried them to a 3-1 non-league victory that improved their record to 21-2.

"We're a little bit funky right now offensively," Gaston College coach Shohn Doty said. "We're getting some guys back so we're having some growing pains that kind of showed up today. We had opportunities in the middle innings that we didn't take advantage of.
"But I was really proud of our pitching staff. We threw some guys that hadn't pitched in a while. Drake (Purvis) went three, then (Zach) Kimmel gave us 1 2/3 innings before being hit with a line drive. Then Julian (Arreola) came in and got five outs on nine pitches, Travis (Smith) was good. And Cooper (Phillips) hadn't thrown in about two weeks and got the last six outs with three punch outs.
"So it was good to have those guys back out there, especially that since they had success."

Offensively, Caden Davidson and Tyler Cook had two hits each and Gabe Simmons' seventh inning home run broke a 1-all tie and Holden Cooper's eighth home run inning provided the final margin of victory.

Gaston College now returns to Region 10 action this weekend with its first road series of the year - a 1 p.m. Saturday doubleheader and a 1 p.m. single game on Sunday.

"Union's got a good team," Doty said. "We'll have swing the bats to be competitive there.
"We've got to get back to where we are offensively by creating more traffic and cutting down on the strikeouts.
"If you keep getting wins in every series, you're probably going to win the league. So we want to keep the momentum going."