3 West Laurens alums help lead GCSU baseball to Peach Belt title, berth in Super Regionals

A trio of West Laurens baseball alumni are helping lead the way for Georgia College in a recent postseason run that has the Bobcats on a nine-game win streak, and headed to the Division II Super Regionals for the first time ever. 

Former Raiders A.J. Mathis (WLHS Class of 2020), Bradley Wilson and Matthew Mebane (2021) have each featured strongly in a 37-20 season that’s come to a memorable ending. 

After wrapping the regular season with a win over Newberry, GCSU swept its way through five games to win the Peach Belt conference tournament May 3-10 and earn the No. 7 seed in the Southeast Region of the NCAA tournament. 

The Bobcats remained on fire in regional action last weekend, knocking off No. 3 North Greenville (9-5) and No. 19 Mt. Olive twice (14-5, 4-3) to reach the supers, where they’ll go up against Catawba College (Salisbury, N.C.) in a best-of-three series Friday and Saturday with a spot in next month’s College World Series up for grabs. 

Mathis, a senior middle reliever, has appeared in 11 games, and posted the team’s fourth-best ERA of 3.44, though his portion of the ‘pen has scarcely been pressed into work this postseason thanks to the longevity of GCSU starting pitchers like Wilson, who transferred to Milledgeville this season from South Georgia. 

The junior has pitched 17 of the 18 innings in his last two starts, going the distance (and striking out five) in a 14-5 win over Mt. Olive in Saturday’s regional semifinal, and working eight (with two strikeouts) in a no-decision leading up to Mebane’s two-run blast that walked off the Bobcats’ 5-4 win over Flagler to clinch the conference title May 10. 

His season ERA, in 14 appearances, is 4.98. 

Mebane, a fellow SGA transfer who’s batting .322 on the season with 20 home runs (a tie for ninth among leaders in DII baseball) and 70 RBIs, went on to support Wilson’s cause on Saturday with three more bombs, going 3-for-3 with a whopping eight RBIs at the plate.