OXFORD – Jacksonville State claimed its third Ohio Valley Conference series and its fourth straight win on Sunday with an 8-3 decision over Tennessee Tech at Choccolocco Park.
The win moved JSU to 17-12 overall and level in the OVC at 6-6. It was the fourth straight rubber game for the Gamecocks after the two clubs split the first two games. Jax State topped Tech on Friday, 7-2 before Tech bounced back to claim Saturday's contest. TTU, who was unblemished in the OVC before the weekend in Oxford, falls to 25-9 overall and 13-2 in the league. JSU has now won back-to-back series against TTU after taking the series last year in Cookeville, Tennessee.
Junior
Trent Simpson broke up a 2-2 fifth inning deadlock with a grand slam over the left field wall. It was Simpson's seventh home run of the season and fourth at Choccolocco Park in his hometown. It was JSU's first grand slam since
Taylor Hawthorne's bases-clearing home run last season against Southeast Missouri. JSU put together back-to-back one-out hits by
Clayton Daniel and
Chase Robinson before
A.J. Reynolds was plunked to load the bases.
The other Oxford, Alabama native on the JSU club, senior
Joe McGuire, was once again solid on the mound and kept the potent Tech offense off balanced for 5.1 innings. McGuire, who moved to 5-0 on the season, allowed five TTU hits and scattered three Golden Eagle solo home runs. He finished with six strikeouts and did not allow a walk. In his last four starts dating back to the Sunday game against Eastern Illinois, McGuire has pitched 24.2 innings and has allowed just 13 hits and fanned 21 batters and walked just three.
Tech posted took a 2-0 lead with solo home runs in the third and fourth innings and tacked on the third round tripper in the sixth. After collected 24 hits on Saturday, the JSU pitching quartet of McGuire,
Nate Sylvester,
Grant Chandler and
Justin Hoyt limited the Golden Eagles to eight hits on Sunday. Chandler pitched two full innings before handing the game to Hoyt with one down in the eighth.
The Gamecock offense held its own with TTU's against the Golden Eagles' arms with a weekend batting average of .315. JSU posted 11 hits off Tech in Sunday's win with Simpson, Daniel,
Chase Robinson and
Payton Young combining for eight hits.
After Tech got one of the runs off the grand slam back in the sixth on Kevin Strohschein's one-out home run, JSU expanded the lead in the bottom frame with RBI singles by senior
Josh Bobo and Reynolds. Freshman
Andrew Naismith and junior
Hayden White produced RBI in the fourth to equalize the contest.
The Gamecocks return to OVC action next weekend in Cape Girardeau, Missouri with the series against Southeast Missouri getting started on Thursday, April 13 due to the Easter holiday weekend. First pitch between the two OVC preseason favorites is set for 6 p.m. All three games will be available on the Gamecock Sports Network and streamed on the OVC Digital Network.
