CARTERSVILLE – Using a barrage of big hits and a dominating performance on the mound, the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Stallions easily advanced in the Georgia Collegiate Athletic Association state baseball tournament with a 15-5 win over East Georgia. The 10-run mercy rule ended the game after five innings. The tournament is being held at the Georgia Highlands Cartersville Field.
With the win, ABAC advances to a second-round matchup Tuesday at noon against top-seeded Georgia Highlands, who had a first-round bye.
The Stallions opened the tournament with one of their best outings of the year. Offensively, ABAC tallied 14 hits and scored multiple runs in four of the five frames. Meanwhile, freshman Jordan Stephens overpowered the Bobcats with a complete game win. He allowed six hits, five in the final inning, and struck out five.
ABAC led 5-1 after three innings when the Stallions blew the game wide open. C.J. Rose drove in the inning’s first run with a bases-loaded single before Cameron Campbell cleared the bases with a triple. Consecutive walks loaded the bases again before Joe Fisher’s sacrifice fly made it 10-1. An infield single from Wyatt Talik brought in Matthew Glass to complete the damage and put the Stallions up 11-1.
Rose had another RBI single in the fifth, followed by a two-run single from Chasin Cash to build a 14-0 advantage. Quinten Rawls was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded, plating the 15th run. Down 15-1, East Georgia had to score five runs in the bottom of the fifth to avoid the mercy rule being enforced and the Bobcats came much closer than the Stallions would have liked. East Georgia led off the bottom of the fifth with three consecutive singles to score its first run. Two more run-scoring singles from John Coleman and Tanner Jones made it 15-5 before Stephens got Jayden Vazquez to fly out to left field, ending the game.
ABAC got an early lead with two runs in the first inning. Rawls and Kenton Collier led off the game with back-to-back doubles and Collier scored on an RBI single from Campbell to go up 2-0. East Georgia’s Thomas Saxon cut that lead in half in the second inning with a solo home run, his 20th of the year, before ABAC answered with three runs in the third – all coming with two outs. After loading the bases with no outs, East Georgia starter A.J. Troup got consecutive strikeouts. But Glass drew a walk to score a run and Cash drove in two more with a double and a 5-1 lead.
Campbell had three hits for ABAC while Rawls, Collier, Drew Rothschild, Rose and Cash had two each. Cash and Campbell drove in four runs each for the Stallions.