AMERICUS, Ga. - The University of North Georgia baseball team won game two of the best-of-three series Sunday to force a decisive game three which Georgia Southwestern took to advance to next week's double-elimination bracket.
GAME 2 - UNG 7, GSW 2
North Georgia got on the board in the first inning when
Tim Conway scored on a wild pitch to take an early 1-0 lead. The scoreboard was silent until the fifth inning when the Hurricanes scored a pair of runs to take the lead before the Nighthawks retook the lead in the sixth, scoring on a wild pitch and an error to take a 3-2 lead.
UNG kept it going in the seventh when
Connor Frost had a bunt single that scored a run before
Crews Taylor tripled to score two more and push the lead to 6-2. The Nighthawks capped the game with a Conway infield single that scored a run to get a 7-2 win.
Daniel Courtney (2-4) got the win, tossing 4.1 innings of shutout baseball.
GAME 3 - GSW 9, UNG 7
Taylor kept the momentum going in the decider with a leadoff homer in the first, tying
Andres Perez for single season homers and taking a 1-0 lead. The 'Canes tied it up in the bottom of the first on a RBI single, but North Georgia retook the lead in the third off a GSW error and pushing the score to 2-1.
Georgia Southwestern got the offense going in the third, scoring five before two more in the fifth to take an 8-2 lead. UNG stopped the momentum in the sixth on a
Riley Frost RBI single and a
Justin Bailey RBI double to cut the lead to four. After a Hurricane RBI single in the bottom of the sixth, North Georgia got a RBI single from
Jorge Arispuro in the seventh and a Bailey RBI single in the eighth to trim the lead down to 8-6. The Nighthawks got the tying run to the plate in the ninth, but couldn't get anything else as the Hurricanes advanced in the tournament.
NOTES
- Taylor finished the twinbill 4-for-10 at the plate with three RIB and two runs scored.
NEXT UP
North Georgia will now wait to see if they can earn an at-large bid to the NCAA Southeast Regional. The Nighthawks were the No. 7 team in last week's regional rankings, and seven teams earn bids to the tournament.
