The High Point University baseball team dropped a pair of closely contested games on Sunday afternoon falling to Jacksonville State, 7-5 and 4-1 in a doubleheader at Erath Field.

Following the weekend sweep by the Gamecocks, High Point slips to 7-15 on the year while JSU leaves town with a 7-8 overall mark.

Both teams got solid starting pitching performances in each of the games but Jacksonville State came up with timely hits and capitalized on a few unfortunate HPU mistakes to earn the pair of wins on Sunday.

In the opening game, JSU manufactured a single run without a hit in the first inning to take the early lead. The Gamecocks tacked on two more in the second stringing together four straight hits after HPU starter Tom Boleska (0-5) had retired the first two batters in the frame.

High Point got on the board in the bottom of the second when Dustin Holtzman singled in Randy Schwartz with the first of his two hits in the game. Jacksonville State pushed their lead to 5-1 in the fourth thanks to doubles by Steven Leach and Bert Smith and an RBI single for Clay Whittemore.

The Panthers trimmed the deficit to 5-3 with a pair of runs in the fifth. J. Williams drove in Jeff Cowan and Chris Norwood with a single up the middle.  JSU again answered scoring two runs in the eighth when Leach singled in both Richard Turner and Ray Bearden, after the pair got into scoring position after a fielding error by HPU.

HPU tried to rally in the ninth scoring a pair of runs to close the gap to 7-5. Gamecock reliever Justin King loaded the bases hitting the first three Panther batters he faced in the final frame. Lee Drinkard followed King to the mound for JSU and after giving up a sacrifice fly to Mark Shorey and throwing a wild pitch that allowed Cowan to score, he got Billy Aguiar to fly out to center to end the game with a runner on third.

Gamecock starter Jon Clements (1-0) earned the victory after striking out seven and allowing no earned runs over six innings of work. Boleska got the loss despite posting one of his better outings – seven innings, four earned runs and four strikeouts. Drinkard picked up his third save of the season and second in as many games throwing a scoreless ninth.

Leach led JSU at the plate with a 3-for-4 performance including a pair of runs batted in. Norwood continued to swing a hot bat for the Panthers posting a 3-for-4 game, recording his team-leading 12th multi-hit game of the year.

The second game featured a pitcher's duel over the opening five innings as both teams struggled at the plate against starters Matt Christie (HPU) and Matthew Darwin (JSU).

High Point plated the games first run in the second as Williams singled to lead off the frame then moved to second on a walk by Chris Marks. Matt Gantner layed down a perfect sacrifice bunt to advance both runners and Holtzman followed with a sacrifice fly scoring Williams.

Jacksonville finally got to Christie in the sixth inning when Leach led off with a double down the leftfield line and then moved to third on Nick Cleckler's sacrifice bunt. Bert Smith laced a triple just inside the rightfield line to score Leach and end Christie's day. Whittemore singled off HPU reliever Bubba O'Donnell scoring Smith and giving the Gamecocks the lead, 2-1. JSU scored once more in the sixth and then added an insurance run in the seventh to earn the 4-1 victory.

Darwin (2-1) earned the complete game victory scattering four hits over seven innings and allowing just the single run. Christie (3-1) suffered his first loss of the season after going 5.1 innings giving up five hits and just two earned runs.

Aguiar finished with two of the Panther's four hits for the game to lead HPU offensively. Eight different JSU players recorded hits in the second game with Leach tallying two as the only player with multiple hits.

High Point concludes its current home stand on Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. against long-time rival Elon. After facing the Phoenix, HPU hits the road to open Big South Conference play on Mar. 17-19 at Coastal Carolina.