Baseball team maintains top five national ranking

The No. 5 Georgia College baseball team is keeping up its pace among the top teams in the nation, most recently winning a home series against USC Aiken March 26-27. After dropping the opener, 10-1 on March 26, the Bobcats swept the Pacers in a doubleheader on March 27, 6-2 and 2-0.

The Bobcats got a pair of stout pitching performances in the sweep. Sophomore lefty Mike Guinane threw eight innings in the first game, allowing only one run on four hits with eight strikeouts.

Senior southpaw Jason Nicholas followed suit in the 2-0 win, as he threw 8.2 innings of shutout baseball and gave way to senior Tanner Moore, who got the last out for the save.

Earlier in the week, the Bobcats split a doubleheader on the road with Lenoir Rhyne, falling 14-8 on March 22, followed by a 17-5 win a day later.

Georgia College fell short to Columbus State Cougars 11-9 on Friday, March 18.

Though they battled all the way to the end, the Bobcats couldn’t hold the lead over the Cougars. In a hard combat, the Bobcats fought back and forth for the lead.

Georgia College was up three runs in the third, then up again after two runs in the fifth.  Both leads were lost after a hard battle by the Cougars, each of our runs being answered by more runs by Columbus State.

The Bobcats finally lost the lead for good in the eighth inning when a pinch hitter for the Cougars hit a homerun, making the game 10-9.

Through the loss, the Bobcats still managed some good hits. Senior rightfielder Shawn Ward went 4-5 with two RBIs. Junior second baseman Luke McKay batted 2-4 with 1 RBI. Senior catcher Richard Pirkle hit his sixth home run of the season, making him second in the Peach Belt Conference.

Freshman reliever Matthew Robinson received his first loss, throwing 3 1/3 innings. He gave up three runs off of four hits. Robinson also struck out three Cougars.

Pirkle said that pitching was the thing to be fixed after the hard loss.

“We just need to come out hard tomorrow and pitch better,” he said.

Pitching seemed to be the downfall for the Bobcats. Head Coach Tom Carty felt the same way.

“We need to pitch better. It’s hard to win a game in baseball when you don’t have good pitching. We gave up a run every inning from the fourth inning on, and we can’t do that,” Carty said.

The Bobcats definitely came out hard the next day, taking the paws out from under the Cougars, with a sweep. Georgia College took game one 8-1 and game two 8-7.

The previous weekend, the Bobcats dropped two out of three on the road at Augusta State. The Jaguars swept Georgia College, 10-1 and 10-9 on March 12, but the Bobcats rebounded with a 19-5 win on March 13.

Georgia College (24-8 overall, 8-4 PBC) will be back in action April 1 to 2, as they travel to Georgia Southwestern for a three-game conference series.