High Point senior Mark Shorey continued his stellar final season belting an opposite-field walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth to lead the Panthers to a 3-2 victory over UNC Asheville on Sunday at Erath Field.

Shorey, the Big South leader in homeruns this season with 15, had two previous at-bats come up just shy of clearing the leftfield fence before his game winner. The blast helped HPU halt a two-game losing skid and even the series with UNCA at 1-1.

With the victory, High Point improves to 20-23 overall and 9-5 in Big South Conference play. The nine league wins equals the program record set in 2002 with HPU also reaching 20 wins in a season since that same year (26). The loss drops the Bulldogs to 16-23 on the year and 5-9 in conference.

The dramatic finish slightly overshadowed a pair of strong pitching performances on Sunday. Asheville starter Chris Nigro went the distance suffering the hard-luck loss after allowing just six hits in 8.1 innings of work. Nigro struckout three and walked just one in his longest outing of the season. Matt Christie pitched seven strong innings for High Point giving up nine hits but holding UNCA to just two runs while posting five strikeouts. HPU's relief duo of Brandon Moore and Chris Marks worked two scoreless innings of relief with Marks picking up the win to move to 5-3 on the year.

"Nigro was unbelievable for them today and probably didn't deserve to get the loss," said HPU head coach Sal Bando, Jr. "I was also very proud of our pitchers and their ability to work out of some jams. We just continued to battle and then Shorey came through like he has all season long. This was an important win for us and hopefully we can carry the momentum into tomorrow's series finale."

UNC Asheville got things started with a bang as leadoff hitter Kevin Mattison worked the count full to start the game before smashing a homerun to right field putting the Bulldogs in front 1-0. Rob Vernon followed with a double before Christie settled down and retired the next 10 Asheville batters in order.

Alfie Wheeler singled in the third inning and then scored on a triple by Jeff Cowan to knot the score at one. Chris Norwood followed with a hard chopper to short that plated Cowan putting the Panthers in front 2-1.

After sandwiching a Johnny Martinez single with a pair of strikeouts in the fourth, Christie ran into some trouble as back-to-back singles by Edmond Locklear and Steven Burnish tied the score and left runners at first and second. Christie induced a groundout to third to end the threat.

The Bulldogs, who left 10 runners on base on the day, mounted scoring opportunities in both the seventh and eighth innings. With runners on second and third in the seventh, Christie got Vernon to flyout to center to end the inning and then after loading the bases with a walk in the eighth, Marks got Kyle Smith to groundout to third setting up Shorey's heroics.

After the Panther's two runs in the third, Nigro worked efficiently facing just one batter over the minimum to the ninth. He got Norwood to leadoff the final frame on a first pitch groundout to short before Shorey ended the game on his 100th pitch of the day.

Shorey and Norwood both went 2-for-4 on the day with RBIs to lead the Panther offense. Shorey hit safely in his 10th consecutive game giving him a pair of double-digit hit streaks this year. Cowan's triple extended his team-leading season hit streak to 16 games.

Matt Henson, the ninth-place hitter in the UNCA lineup, went 3-for-3 on the day with two singles and  a double. Locklear also finished with a pair of hits in three at-bats.

High Point and Asheville square off at 3 p.m. on Monday in the series finale. HPU sends junior David Parker to the mound in the rubber-game and UNCA will counter with Michael Bogaert.