With the victory, Coastal Carolina improves to 49-7 and will play the winner of No. 2 Liberty-No. 4 High Point on Friday at 3 p.m. Radford is eliminated with the loss and ends its season at 29-26.

 

Chance Gilmore and Tommy La Stella did the most damage for Coastal Carolina -  Gilmore was 2-for-4 with four RBIs, while La Stella finished 3-for-4 with three runs driven in. 

 

Radford was led by Tyren Rivers with five RBI, including a fourth-inning grand slam, his sixth homer, and three hits from Raphael Turner.

 

Matt Rein earned the win in relief of Cody Wheeler for Coastal Carolina. Rein went three innings, allowed one run and struck out four. Wheeler allowed eight runs (five earned) on seven hits in 4 1/3 innings pitched. Austin Fleet retired the Highlanders in order in the ninth inning for his eighth save of the season. 

 

Coastal Carolina batted around in the second inning and jumped ahead 10-0.  Gilmore opened the scoring with a two-run double, then Rico Noel had an RBI-double, Scott Woodward had an RBI ground out, Jose Iglesias contributed an RBI-single and La Stella belted a two-run home run that chased Radford starter Eddie Butler. New pitcher Brad Wimmer gave up a two-run single to Gilmore, who eventually scored on a wild pitch for the 10th and final run of the inning. Taylor Motter doubled twice in the inning and Gilmore had four RBI in his two trips to the plate.

 

In the fourth, Rivers blasted a grand slam to make it 10-4. It was his sixth home run of the season. Matt Hillsinger had reached on a fielder's choice and Andrew Cook followed with a walk. After Robert Lamas struck out, Coastal Carolina starter Cody Wheeler walked Phil Bondi to load the bases before Rivers homered to left center.

 

The Highlanders batted around in the fifth inning and plated four runs to close the gap to 10-8. Turner singled with one out and Alex Guerra followed with a fielder's choice. Turner was safe at second on an error on the play, and scored on Hillsinger's single to center. Cook singled to left to score Guerra, and after the second out was recorded, Bondi delivered a single to center to score Hillsinger. Rivers singled to left to bring home Cook to make it a two-run game.

 

La Stella gave the Chanticleers some breathing room with this second home run of the game in the sixth inning. In the eighth, Radford narrowed the margin to two runs again when Brett Mollenhauer opened the inning with a triple and scored on Turner's double to the gap.

 

“For a coach, the 10-run inning is a thing of beauty. Honestly, there wasn't a cheap hit in the group. Usually when you put an inning together like that, there are a couple of dinks and things. They made one error on that ground ball, but every ball was squared up good. (Butler) was 94-96 and our guys were squaring him up. That was good.”

 

“Obviously it's tough to rebound from a 10-run inning, but our club actually did that. We played hard for nine innings and battled. This is a senior group that I am proud of. This program has been evolving the last two years and this group took it to the next level. I am really happy for those guys.”