WNCC baseball beats Orange Coast

The Western Nevada Community College baseball team held its own against another ranked team, but in the end lost to California's sixth ranked team.

WNCC (4-4) fell to Orange Coast 8-5 on Sunday in a game in which it was the home team in Costa Mesa. Douglas High graduate Chad Walling went 1-for-3 with a two-run double and Carson graduate Aaron Henry went 1-for-1 with a run for the Wildcats.

Orange Coast jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning on a grand slam home run. WNCC was able to close to within 4-3 and 5-4 before falling. Orange Coast had 13 hits against two of WNCC's top pitchers, Cole Rohrbough and Stephen Sauer.

"It was the best hitting team we've seen all year," WNCC coach D.J. Whittemore said. "They pounded out 13 hits against two of our top five pitchers."

WNCC also couldn't fully take advantage of seven walks. "We couldn't take advantage," Whittemore said. "We left a lot of runners on base."

After Rohrbough allowed the grand slam, he settled down, holding Orange Coast to one run over the next four innings. Rohrbough was pulled after five innings when he reaced his pitch count of 75 pitches.

Saurer was touched for three runs over 3.1 innings. Ryan Iodence came into the game in the ninth and induced a double play to end the inning with WNCC trailing 8-4.

WNCC closed to within 4-3 in the third on the strength of Walling's two-run double. Walling scored to make it 4-3 when Taylor Meiras executed a perfect squeeze bunt and reached on a bunt single on the play.

Tyson Jaquez went 2-for-4, Chadd Dudley had an RBI double and a run, Spanish Springs' Brad Carlsen had an RBI sacrifice fly and Jerahmie Libke added a hit for WNCC.

The Wildcats return to action this weekend when they return for a series of games in Southern Nevada, beginning at 3 p.m. Friday in Henderson against Central Arizona, the 2002 College World Series champions.