Wildcat pitcher Matt Young fires one from the mound during a game against College of Southern Idaho last season at WNC.
Corey Pool is on a longball hot streak.
Pool homered in back-to-back games to help the Western Nevada College baseball team split its Scenic West Athletic Conference doubleheader Thursday at John L. Harvey Field.
Pool’s two-run homer in the fifth inning of the opener iced the opener, 7-4. He homered in the second game to tie the game, but CSI managed to grab an 8-4 victory.
The teams conclude their four-game series with a doubleheader at 11 a.m.
Pool has now homered in three straight games. He homered against Sierra College on Tuesday.
CSI tied the game at 4 in the opener when Kody Garvin singled home Cole Walters, who had walked, advanced to second on an errant pick-off throw by Max Karnos and moved to third on an infield out. Conner Zwetsch came on to get the first batter he faced, but then yielded the game-tying single to Garvin.
The Wildcats came back to re-take the lead thanks to some nice two-out hitting.
Kody Reynolds, who went 4-for-7 in the doubleheader, singled and moved to second on a wild pitch. He scored on Tim Lichty’s off-field single to make it 5-4. Pool gave WNC some insurance runs when he cranked a 3-1 pitch over the fence in right-centerfield. It was his second consecutive opposite-field homer.
“I didn’t think the one on Tuesday was gone, but I knew this one was,” Pool said. “It was a fastball down the middle. On 3-1, it was a hitter’s count. I was looking for it.
“I made an adjustment on my swing. I’m trying to be shorter to the ball; let it get deeper and see it longer. I’m not trying to pull the ball.”
The three-run rally made a winner of Zwetsch, who has yet to allow an earned run over eight appearances and 15 innings. He has fanned 18 and allowed nine hits in that span. He yielded a hit and walk in the seventh before retiring the final hitter.
“I’m feeling pretty good,” Zwetsch said. “Things are definitely better than last year. Things are coming together.”
WNC starter Max Karnos had a rocky start, walking three batters and yielding a run-scoring single to Harrison Ramey in the first, as CSI bolted to a 2-0 lead.
The Wildcats took a 3-2 lead thanks to a two-run double by Reynolds and a triple by Lichty. CSI tied the game at 3 with a single run in the third, and D.J. Peters’ triple plus a passed ball gave the Wildcats a 4-3 lead. CSI tied it in the fifth, knocking Karnos out of the box in the process.
“It wasn’t the the best game we’ve played, but we’ll take the win,” said Lichty.
The second game started in promising fashion, as WNC starter Matt Young no-hit CSI through the first three innings, and his teammates gave him a 2-0 cushion against lefty Zack Draper thanks to a double steal worked by Jake Bennett and Reynolds, and a run-scoring infield out by Bennett.
CSI took a 3-2 lead with four straight singles by Ethan Ibarra, Walters, Cody Jenkins and Bodie Cooper plus a squeeze bunt by Mikey Ortega.
Pool tied the game with a solo homer, this shot well beyond the fence in left centerfield.
CSI took the lead for good with three more runs, two unearned, in the fifth. Austin Andrews made a key two-out error and Cooper followed with a triple to score Jenkins, who had reached on an error. Cooper was thrown out at the plate trying to stretch the hit into an inside-the-park home run. Oretga’s solo homer in the sixth made it 7-3, and CSI tacked on an unearned run in the seventh.
Reynolds completed the scoring in the eighth with a two-out homer.
“We beat a real good pitcher in the first game (CSI starter Makay Nelson),” WNC coach D.J. Whittemore said.
“We lost to a real good pitcher in the second game. They have one of the best pitching staffs around.”