Panthers topple Titans

The South Florida Community College baseball team has been winning its games by all sorts of means in the early part of the season.

That trend continued on Wednesday night as South Florida stunned St. Petersburg College with a 10-run rally in the seventh inning and the Panthers held on for a wild 12-7 win.

The important victory improved South Florida to 16-11 overall and an impressive 3-1 in Suncoast Conference play.

"Our guys were ready to go and we talked about what we had to do to be successful and we executed that tonight," South Florida veteran coach Rick Hitt said. "Our guys went up there, did what they had to do and got the next guy to the plate.

"Every team has been on both sides of that scenario and tonight our guys did a really good job of getting the next guy to the plate and kept battling for a good win."

St. Petersburg jumped out to a lead in the top of the first inning behind a three-run home run to left field by Jake Rogers off of Panther left-hander Alex Young.

"Rogers is a good hitter," said Hitt. "We got the ball up to him and he hit it out of the ball park."

South Florida got on the scoreboard in the home half of the fourth inning on a solo home run by former Avon Park standout Kyle Jackson to trim its deficit to 3-1.

The Titans increased their lead with a pair of runs in the top of the sixth inning for a seemingly comfortable 5-1 lead.

All of that changed in the fateful seventh inning when the dormant Panther offense woke up.

South Florida's Ryan Osenton, Ethan Lovell and Brandon Kirby started the inning with singles to load the bases.

With one out, Greg Smith hit a high chopper back at the pitcher, which bounced off the top of his glove for an infield single and an RBI.

Tom Sicking lined a single through the right side of the infield to score a run and Jackson reached base on an infield hit to plate another run.

Karson Kravec was hit by a pitch to force in a run to tie the game at 5.

Chris Torres kept the hit parade going with an infield single to give the Panthers their first lead of the game.

Ryan Osenton lofted a sacrifice fly to plate a run, second baseman Cody Higgins followed with an RBI double down the third-base line and Lovell, up for the second time in the inning, smacked a two-run double to right field.

Lovell advanced to third on a balk and trotted home with 10th and final run of the inning on an RBI single by Kirby to give SFCC an 11-7 lead.

The Panthers managed to score the 10 runs off three different Titans pitchers.

"You didn't see us hit a lot of balls out of the ballpark," Hitt said. "We had a bunch of base hits and we just kept grinding them."

Young had his strongest outing of the year, as the Panther left-hander hurled seven solid innings, scattered six hits and gave up only five runs to earn the victory.

"Alex had his best outing of the year," Hitt said. "He had his breaking ball today, managed the game well and he kept us around.

"You have to give him all the credit."

Austin Wood, a big-time prospect, was the starter for St. Petersburg and had a crowd of about 20 professional scouts on hand to watch him.

The hard-throwing right-hander pitched five innings, gave up four hits and struck out four before being pulled from the game.

"Wood is pretty good," Hitt said. "We knew that going in and our goal was to have tough at-bats to keep elevating his pitch total and keep the ball in play.

"Our guys did a good job of that."

South Florida looks to keep its winning ways going as it hosts the Titans at 6 today and the Panthers travel to St. Petersburg for a game on Saturday.