March 14, 2014
GGC 19, OSU Lima 0
GGC 8, OSU Lima 0
Sophomore Jereid Woods belted seven hits over two games and fellow sophomore Sheldon Connor set a new school single-game mark with 11 strikeouts as the Georgia Gwinnett baseball team won its 17th- and 18th-straight games with 19-0 and 8-0 shutouts of Ohio State-Lima on Friday at the Grizzly Baseball Complex.
Woods finished the day 7-for-9 at the plate with six runs scored, four RBIs and his first career homer. The Zebulon native also stole three bases.
Meanwhile, senior Garitt Church put up a 6-for-7 day with four RBIs and three runs scored as the Grizzlies tallied 31 hits on the day and held the Barons to just four.
Georgia Gwinnett improved to 24-3 on the season.
Both contests were seven-inning games.
Game One- GGC 19, OSU Lima 0
The Grizzlies mounted an 18-hit attack, led by four-hit games from Woods and Church. Christian Van Camp also drove in four runs.
Starter Brandon MacKinnon (4-0) and relievers Austin Smith and Ryan Turner held the Barons scoreless while yielding just three hits. MacKinnon struck out five over 5.0 innings to pick up the win.
Phillip Bates led off with a first-inning double and later scored on Woods’ RBI single. Robbie Payne followed with an RBI triple and Van Camp’s sacrifice fly made it 3-0 GGC.
With OSU Lima threatening in the second, Van Camp ended the inning with a sliding grab on a diving ball in right field.
Woods added to GGC’s lead with a leadoff home run over the wall in left, his first career long ball. Van Camp belted an RBI single that scored Ty Abbott later in the inning to make the score 5-0.
Neither team scored in the fourth or fifth, but the Grizzlies batted around twice in the bottom of the sixth to blow the game open with 14 runs on 11 hits, including five extra-base hits.
Church dropped his third hit of the game on the right field line in the sixth inning to score Zach Alvord and give GGC a 6-0 cushion. Later, Kyle Norton’s two-run single made it 8-0. Antonio Allen scored on a wild pitch and pinch hitter Eli Green delivered a two-run single as GGC took an 11-0 lead. Van Camp added an RBI double and Alvord tripled him home. Church belted an RBI double, Woods had a two-run double and Sloan Strickland knocked an RBI single.
Twelve different Grizzlies accounted for the scoring.
Game Two- GGC 8, OSU Lima 0
Connor tossed a gem over six innings, striking out 11 batters and allowing only a lone sixth-inning single to the Barons. The Duluth native moved to 4-0 on the mound this year.
Strickland got the Grizzlies going with an RBI single in the first inning to score Woods. Abbott followed with an RBI single as GGC opened up an early 2-0 lead.
GGC scored once in the second and Abbott added another RBI single to start the scoring in the fourth. Church brought in two more with a liner back up the middle to make it 6-0.
Church doubled and scored on a single by Antonio Allen in the sixth and Eli Green doubled off the wall to produce the final 8-0 score.
Green finished the day 4-for-4 at the plate.
The Grizzles, the nation’s highest-scoring team, have now tallied 271 runs over 27 games- almost exactly 10 per contest.
The series between GGC and OSU Lima concludes on Saturday with a single 2 p.m. contest.
