CONCORDIA, Kansas — The Cloud County Community College baseball team earned a split in Saturday's home opening series against Highland Community, battling back from a tough 2-1 loss in Game One to take the nightcap, 7-4.

The victory in Game Two gave Cloud County (4-3 overall) a season series win over Highland (2-3 overall) after sweeping the Scotties 9-4 and 13-5 on Thursday. But missing the chance for a series sweep stung a bit for the T-Birds.

"We're not happy with a split at home, especially against a team that we beat twice on the road. But hopefully we learned a lesson from it," said Cloud County head coach, Eric Gilliland.

In Game One, Cloud County tallied two hits and pushed across a run courtesy of freshman Tauren Langley's RBI double, tying the score at 1-1.

The bats went silent after that as Cloud had just one hit — an infield hit by freshman Matt Bondarchuk in the sixth inning. Bondarchuk stole second and advanced to third on a passed ball, with Cloud County trailing 2-1, but the T-Birds were unable to bring him in as Highland starter Jose Acosta escaped the jam.

"Acosta did a really nice job. He settled in, mixed pitches, threw strikes and his defense played well behind him," Gilliland said. "Our guys simply didn't make an adjustment to what he was doing."

Cloud's bats woke up a bit in Game Two as, following a lead-off walk drawn by Ryan Krolikowski in the third inning, sophomore first baseman Kolton Meyer drilled his fourth home run of the season. His two-run gave the T-Birds an early 2-0 lead.

Cloud added a third run in the inning on a RBI groundout by sophomore catcher Garrett Graveline.

"It was huge to score early to kind of burst it open a little bit and take some pressure off," Gilliland said. "After losing a tight game, the whole day was kind of pins and needles. We've shown that we need that as a young team. We almost need to score first and play with a lead for us not to press."

Highland drew within a run after a two-run third inning — only one earned — but the T-Birds added a pair of insurance runs in the fifth and in the sixth innings to balloon the lead to 6-2.

Langley hit a laser home run to left to lead off the fifth inning and Trae McDaniel slapped an RBI double to left three batters later.

Langley added a sacrifice fly RBI in the sixth, while Krolikowski concluded Cloud's scoring with a RBI single.

Sophomore right-hander Drew Scrimsher was fantastic in Game Two, better than his final line indicates as he went 6 2/3 innings, allowed four runs, three earned while striking out five versus one walk.

Scrimsher had allowed just two runs heading to the top of the seventh, but ran out of steam in the seventh. Sophomore Erick Carrion nailed down the final out for his first save of the season.

"Drew stepped up big (Saturday). We had to go to the bullpen early in Game One and we needed a big-time start in Game Two," Gilliland said. "Drew competes his butt off and he did a great job of filling up the strike zone, competing for us, and getting deep into the ballgame."

Cloud County will continue its current six-game home stand on Thursday when it hosts Hastings College HV. Game times are set for 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.