laser show

The tone was set on opening day at Dub Herring Park in Poplarville. The Pearl River Community College Wildcats slugged five home runs in a doubleheader sweep of East Central CC on Feb. 3, and the laser show has continued all season for a team that has climbed to first place in the state standings and to No. 2 in the national poll. PRCC (21-5, 11-3 MACCC) has 53 home runs, third-most in NJCAA Division II. They hit eight in one game in February. The Wildcats are slugging .577 as a team. They take a seven-game win streak into today’s big doubleheader at Hinds (14-10, 12-6). Pablo Lanzarote leads the Eagles with eight homers. PRCC has four players with eight or more. Kasey Donaldson and Graham Crawford each hit their ninth on Friday, two of the four the team belted in a 10-0, 5-inning win against Holmes. Tate Parker also has nine; Von Seibert sits at eight and Eric Newsom at five. That makes for a pretty scary lineup. But the Wildcats can also scratch out a win, as they did in Game 2 against Holmes on Friday. They got just five hits, pushed across the winning run in the sixth on a sac fly and used some gritty pitching from Dakota Lee to close it out. “What makes this league so tough and people don’t understand about junior college baseball is you play a doubleheader and there is no guarantee Game 1 is going to be like Game 2 and vice versa,” PRCC coach Michael Avalon said in a school release. Landon Gartman tops the team’s pitchers with a 4-0 record and 2.10 ERA; the other three regular starters are a combined 10-1. P.S. East Central is second in the league standings at 14-4, and Itawamba is third at 10-4, percentage points ahead of Hinds.