Chipola sweeps Gulf Coast

By Dustin Kent

Published: March 22, 2008

Chipola picked up a pair of key Panhandle Conference wins this weekend, sweeping the Gulf Coast Commodores Friday and Saturday to give the Indians three straight league victories.

The Indians got a three-run ninth to beat Gulf Coast 6-5 Friday night at Chipola Field in the first game of the series.

Chipola got a nice outing from Drew Parker and homers from Moses Montero and Jordan Lucas to take a 5-3 win in Saturday’s game in Panama City.

The Indians are now 28-8-1 overall and 4-2 in conference play.

That, however, isn’t enough to satisfy Chipola coach Jeff Johnson.

“We’ll take the wins and move on, but I hope we start playing better,” the coach said. “If we don’t, we’ll be in trouble. You don’t ever complain about winning in the Panhandle Conference, you take it and move on.

“I just hope that our guys realize that they’re not playing at the level they need to play at to keep winning as the year progresses.”

One issue the Indians have had this season is giving up late leads, which they did again Friday night.

Chipola led 3-2 after eight innings, but Jake Sullivan’s RBI single off of Ben Jeffers tied the game with one out.

Two batters later, Mario Mitchell ripped a Carlos Moncrief pitch down the right field line to score two runs and give the Commodores a 5-3 lead.

Dan Jacobs came on in relief of Will Smith in the ninth inning for Gulf Coast but didn’t find nearly the same success as the Commodore starter.

Chipola starter Ryan Chaffee re-entered the game in the ninth as a designated hitter and drew a one-out walk.

Tyler Bumgarner then reached on a high chopper to shortstop that went for an infield single.

Chris Berroa was then hit by a Jacobs pitch to load the bases with one out.

Daniel Jones popped up into shallow center for the second out, which brought Marc Bourgeois to the plate.

Bourgeois delivered for the Indians with a two-run single to right field to tie the game.

The throw to home was off the mark, allowing Berroa to come all the way around from first base to score the winning run.

On Saturday, Chipola took a 5-2 lead into the eight inning after Montero’s two-run homer in the seventh.

Gulf Coast’s Eddie Cassidy cut into the lead in the eighth with a solo homer, but there would be no rally this time.

Parker got through the eighth and registered an out in the ninth before giving way to Matt Jackson, who got the final two outs for the save.

Ironically, Johnson said he felt better about Friday’s game, which the Indians had to scramble to pull out, than Saturday’s win.

“We gave up a late lead, but I was more pleased because the effort was so good,” the coach said. “We just messed some things up, made some mistakes down the stretch that got us in trouble, but you like to see a team that can come from behind. Until you do that, you don’t know if you have a team that can do it.”

On Saturday, Johnson said he saw some things from his team that disturbed him in spite of the victory.

“They’re just silly things that get you beat down the line,” he said. “We’ve got to get all that stuff corrected. It’s the little things that we preach and talk about that we’re doing a poor job with right now.
“If we just play with a little more effort and desire, we should be okay.”