HIGH POINT, N.C. – The High Point University baseball team defeated the Appalachian State Mountaineers, 13-7, on Tuesday night for its first victory over ASU since 2014.
 
Site: Williard Stadium
Score: High Point 13, App State 7
Records: High Point (5-0), App State (1-3)
 
Head Coach Joey Hammond: "Happy to get a win, proud of our guys. A lot of really good things happened to get over the hump. We haven't had a lot of success against App State in recent history, but we showed up today with the expectation to play good baseball and we did just that. Our offense was relentless from start to finish, just punishing baseball with extra base hits. I felt our pitchers did a really good job of minimizing runs and not giving up free bases. We punched out 14 guys tonight, our stuff was really good."
 
Four different Panthers recorded three hits in tonight's game as the team hit five total home runs. Four of which came in back-to-back fashion as Landen Johnson hit two of those five. Backed by a relentless offense, Joey Tuttoilmondo earned the win as he pitched 3.0 innings in relief, allowing three runs, on five hits, and striking out five batters.
 
HPU jumped ahead from the start after Brayden Simpson started the offense with a 419-foot two run home run over the batter's eye in the bottom of the first. To follow, Johnson went back-to-back with a solo shot over the right field fence to take an early 3-0 lead. 
 
The Panthers brought home three more runs in the second after RBI's from James Murphy, Simpson, and Johnson, before the Mountaineers got on the board with a two run shot by Tyler Figueroa and a solo homer from John Kramer.
 
Four more runs came home in the fourth for HPU after Johnson and Three Hillier went back-to-back for a pair of runs. Jackson Melton brought another run home on single to left field followed by Christian Smith poking a double off the wall to score Melton from first.
 
Another pair of homers from App State by Figueroa and Kameron Miller made it a five-run ballgame, 10-5, in the fifth. Hillier added another RBI to his stat sheet as he sent a ball down the left field line for a double, scoring Murphy. In the top of the sixth, a sacrifice fly scored a Mountaineer run before Melton went yard for his first of 2025 in the bottom half of the frame.
 
App State cut its deficit to five after an RBI single to right field scoring Miller. The High Point's 13th run crossed in the bottom of the seventh when Hillier tallied his third hit of the night, scoring Murphy from second.
 
Charlie Jones came in to shut things down in the top of the ninth after he sat down two batters to earn the mid-week victory for HPU. The 5-0 start for High Point is its best start to a season in the Division I era.
 
Up Next: High Point will host University of Toledo for a three-game series starting on Friday, February 21 at 4:00 p.m.