No. 7 Gaston College rolls past Guilford Tech in mid-week non-league game

One week after outlasting Guilford Tech in an 11-inning road game, No. 7 Gaston College's baseball team completed a seasonal sweep of the Titans with an offensive-minded 15-5, 5-inning victory Tuesday afternoon at Gastonia's Sims Legion Park.

"Obviously, we played better than last week when we played them," Gaston College coach Shohn Doty said. "But there's still some things to clean up."

The Rhinos fell behind 2-0 after the top of the first inning and were tied at 5 in the top of the fifth inning before their offense erupted to close out the contest by the 10-run mercy rule.

Gaston College scored seven in the fourth inning highlighted by Koy Swanson's two-run double and Logan Ponnett's two-run single. Then in the fifth, Kandan Zollo drove in two runs before Swanson's solo home run ended the game.

Ponnett (4 hits, 3 RBIs), Swanson (2 hits, double, home run, 3 RBIs) and Caden Davidson (2 hits, 1 RBI) led the 12-hit offense that opened the game with a five-run bottom of the first.

With the seven-run fourth, Gaston College has now had 26 innings of five or more runs so far this season.

"We've been dynamic all year offensively and today we did a great job staying on the barrel," Doty said.

On the mound, reliever Cooper Phillips threw scoreless baseball for the final 1 1/3 innings to pick up the victory.

This weekend, Gaston College (29-2, 10-2) looks to stay atop the Region 10 standings by closing out the first round of league play with a three-game series at USC Lancaster (16-12, 4-6) - a 1 p.m. doubleheader on Saturday and a 1 p.m. single game on Sunday.

"We're going to give them a day off tomorrow, practice hard on Thursday and Friday and then head out to finish the first round of the conference schedule on the road where it's hard to win," Doty said.