The Brevard College baseball team (9-5) won the rubber match of a three-game non-conference set against Averett University (2-11), 13-10, on Sunday afternoon at Gil Coan Field.
The Tornados scored 13 runs on 19 hits, as Brevard accumulated its second highest hit total of the season and its seventh double-digit hit performance. Everyone in the starting nine for BC had multiple hits in the contest.
Jack Atkinson had a career day at the plate, going 3-for-5 with a double and a pair of runs and RBI. Blake Burchett scored a team-high three runs, while Jason Jucker totaled three RBI. Logan Clark and Frankie Vasquez both had extra-base hits, and Burchett stole a career-high three bases.
Cesar Rodriguez (1-0) earned his first career win, coming in the contest in the sixth inning and staying in until the final out. Rodriguez, a sophomore left-handed pitcher from Hialeah, Florida, went four innings allowing five runs with a strikeout. Bryce Bowers got the start, going five innings with five earned runs and three strikeouts.
Averett also tallied 19 hits in the contest, scoring 10 runs while committing five costly errors. Brandon Hatcher led the Cougars with a four-hit performance, while Avery Spicer and Kevin Zischke each went yard.
The Cougars were able to jump out to the early lead when Hatcher logged an RBI double that was followed by Zischke’s two-run homer, making it a 3-0 ballgame in the top of the first. Brevard’s offense answered immediately, totaling four runs on seven hits in the bottom half of the inning to take a 4-3 lead. Jucker drove in a pair of runners on a two-RBI single, while Vasquez hit a sacrifice fly and Peter Fumero slapped an RBI single to center field. BC had the bases loaded with one out, but Averett made a pitching change and got out of the jam.
Cale Oehler continued his productive weekend with a two-RBI single that extended Brevard’s lead to a 6-3 margin in the bottom of the second. The Cougars answered back in the top of the third with Spicer’s two-run homer, cutting the deficit to one run, 6-5.
A costly error by the Cougars in the bottom of the frame allowed Brevard to score its seventh run of the afternoon. Both staffs settled down in the ensuing three innings, as both teams went scoreless in the fourth-through-sixth frames.
Averett was able to put together a rally in the top of the seventh, using a wild pitch, a two-RBI double, and an RBI single to retake the lead, 9-7. Jucker got things going with the bases loaded and nobody out, hitting an infield single and advancing to second on an errant throw, scoring two runs and tying things up at nine-all. A wild pitch gave BC the lead back, 10-9, before Vasquez’s second sacrifice fly of the contest made it a two-run ballgame. Atkinson put an exclamation point on the inning, stroking a two-RBI single to left-center field as BC capped off a six-run seventh inning and held a four-run lead, 13-9.
Rodriguez was able to cruise through the eighth inning and finish the contest in the ninth, working out of a Cougar rally. With the bases loaded and nobody out, Averett hit a single to center field that scored one run. However, Atkinson loaded up and fired a strike to the plate to prevent a second run from scoring. The game was clinched on a 643 double play, as the Tornados earned a hard-fought series win over Averett.
Brevard returns to action on Thursday with a neutral-site contest against Case Western Reserve University in Lexington, South Carolina at Lexington County Stadium at 1 p.m.