No. 7 Gaston College completes impressive 3-game road sweep

No. 7 Gaston College's baseball closed out the first round of Region 10 action atop the league standings and with a 13-game winning streak following an impressive three-game sweep at USC Lancaster.

The Rhinos won 17-8 in seven innings, 19-7 in seven innings and 14-3 in five innings to improve to 32-2 overall and 13-2 in league action.

"We knew going in that it's a smaller park and we wanted to try and avoid the temptation offensively of already trying to go big," Gaston College coach Shohn Doty said. "We did a good job with and since we have a lot of guys with power potential, that obviously showed up.
"We had traffic in a ton of innings and, for the most part, pitched it well."

The offense erupted for 41 hits during the weekend and produced runs in 15 of their 19 innings.

Record-setting freshman first baseman Caden Davidson, who lead the region in home runs (13) and RBIs (62) powered the sweep by setting a single game school record with three home runs in the nightcap of Saturday's doubleheader sweep.

Davidson finished the weekend with eight hits, nine RBIs, three home runs and a double.

Other top hitters were Logan Ponnett (5 hits, home run, 3 RBIs), Joey Nicholson (5 hits, double, home run, 4 RBIs), Nick Diehl (5 hits, 4 home runs, 10 RBIs), Gabe Simmons (5 hits, 3 doubles, home run, 3 RBIs), Koy Swanson (3 hits, 3 home runs, 8 RBIs), Tyler Cook (3 hits, 2 RBIs), Chris Hendrickson (3 hits, 2 home runs, 6 RBIs) and David Nicks (2 hits) were other offensive standouts in the sweep.

Gaston College also got impressive efforts from its pitching staff as reliever Sean Williams (2 2/3 innings) picked up the victory in Saturday's doubleheader opener, Brayden Hill (5 innings, 7 strikeout) won Saturday's nightcap and Jack Aurelius (4 2/3 innings, 3 strikeouts) took the victory on Sunday.

The Rhinos return to action on Tuesday at 2 p.m. at Gastonia's Sims Legion Park against Roane State Community College before beginning the second half of Region 10 play with a three-game series at No. 9-ranked Florence Darlington Tech - a 1 p.m. Saturday doubleheader and 1 p.m. Sunday contest.

"We've got a game on Tuesday and obviously a big series this weekend," Doty said. "For now, we've got to keep working to get better."