HIGH POINT, N.C. – The High Point University baseball team finished the weekend off the right way, sweeping Stonehill College as a seven-run seventh inning lifted the Panthers to an 11-6 victory on Sunday afternoon.
Site: Williard Stadium
Score: High Point 11, Stonehill 6
Records: High Point (12-4), Stonehill (0-10)
Head Coach Joey Hammond: "Great end result to sweep the weekend. It's exciting and it's what we set out to do. It wasn't the way we mapped it out today, but again, you learn things about your club and so never say die is obviously in place. I'm proud of our guys for not panicking when things weren't going our way early on. I can't say enough good things about
Joey Tuttoilmondo and
Adam Grintz, putting all those zeroes up to just give us a chance and get back in it offensively. I'm incredibly confident with our offense and was confident we'd get back in it, but it requires our pitchers to go out and the defense to just put up zeros, which is not easy to do and they certainly did it so credit to those guys. Obviously, some really good big hits and
Brayden Simpson's big hit really got us going, and then we just started stacking quality at-bats again. I felt like we had some untimely poor at-bats early in the game, but when we needed it the most, we stacked them and put up a big number, which got us where we wanted to be."
Stonehill took its first lead of the series, jumping out to a 6-0 advantage but those were the only runs the Skyhawks would see.
Joey Tuttoilmondo relieved
Dalton Hitt in the middle of the fourth inning and halted the damage as he allowed only one hit.
For the third straight game,
Jake McCarter homered to give High Point its first runs in the fifth inning and jumpstart the comeback.
Down four runs heading into the bottom of the seventh, the High Point offense officially woke up and never went to sleep. With one out,
Miggy Echazarreta drew a walk followed by another free pass with
Landen Johnson at the plate.
The hot bat of
Brayden Simpson has been clutch all weekend and he came up clutch once again, hitting a three-run bomb over the centerfield batter's eye to cut the deficit to one run, 6-5. Two more runners reached base before a pitching change for the Skyhawks took place. Two consecutive walks scored the tying runner to bring up
Jack Clark with the bases loaded. Clark was drilled with a pitch to score the go-ahead runner. HPU batted around the order as
Konni Durschlag stepped up and ripped a single to left field to score two runners. After the final out was recorded, High Point held a 9-6 lead, scoring seven runs, on three hits.
Adam Grintz, in his second inning of work, came up big as he pitched to an 1-2-3- inning with the help of a 4-6-3 double play.
High Point kept stacking at-bats in the bottom of the eighth, plating two more runs on two hits. With two runners in scoring position,
Jackson Melton singled through the right side to score both of those runs.
Grintz pitched another perfect inning in the top of the ninth as he sat down the Skyhawks to complete the sweep.
Up Next: The Panthers host UNC Greensboro for a mid-week game on Tuesday, March 11 at 4 p.m.
#GoHPU
