PEMBROKE — It just took one swing to get Kody O’Connor going. It got the rest of the UNC Pembroke baseball team going.

And the Braves rode that wave of momentum all the way to a pair of wins that will get national attention in Division-II baseball circles.

UNCP beat North Greenville 13-4 and 6-3 in Saturday’s doubleheader at Sammy Cox Field, winning two out of three games in the Conference Carolinas weekend series against the second-ranked Crusaders.

“It’s really big, you can’t get much bigger,” UNCP coach Paul O’Neil said. “They’re the No. 2 team in the country and they’re really good. They’ve got an excellent team and they’re really well coached. They’ve got really good players. For us to be able to win two out of three and to beat them twice in the same day is a testament to our kids and how hard they’re working and their dedication and their resilience to not give in after losing on Friday night.”

After a 9-5 win by North Greenville (21-6, 9-3 CC) in Friday’s series opener, the momentum of the series changed on Kody O’Connor’s first-inning three-run home run in the opening game of Saturday’s twin bill. The Braves (20-6, 7-5 CC) never trailed the rest of the way in that game, and never trailed in the nightcap either, en route to the pair of victories.

“It gets us back on track, and this is what we work for,” O’Connor said. “Every day we go in, we practice really hard. You want to win every conference series, and when you take one like this it’s huge. It’s huge for us, it gets the momentum going for us.”

O’Connor went on to record three extra-base hits and six RBIs in Saturday’s two games, reaching 30 RBIs for the season to take over the team lead.

UNCP dealt North Greenville its first series loss since Mount Olive took two of three from the Crusaders from March 31 to April 1, 2023. The Braves won a series against North Greenville for the first time in three tries, and earned their first series win over a top-5 opponent since beating North Georgia in 2017.

The Braves will carry the momentum from the series win into a Tuesday nonconference game at USC Beaufort and next weekend’s Conference Carolinas series at Mount Olive.

Game One

Behind O’Connor’s two home runs, the Braves scored 13 runs in the doubleheader opener, the most scored by a North Greenville opponent this season.

O’Connor’s first homer plated three Braves in the first inning.

“It makes you feel really good (to start the day with a home run),” O’Connor said. “I’m seeing it well, after not having the best success the past week and a half, two weeks. I practiced really hard this week with Coach (Ryan) Brown, Coach O’Neil, and they’ve got a lot of trust and confidence in me and it felt really good to get off to a good start like that.”

The home run was just one part of a big start over the first two frames by the Braves. After two North Greenville runs scored in the top of the second, the Braves answered with six of their own in the bottom half, with RBI hits from Carlos Amezquita, Andrew Jenner, Joey Rezek and Jacob Hinson, and a steal of home by Rezek, to give the Braves a 9-2 lead.

“We’ve played from behind this year way more times than in front,” O’Neil said. “It seems like we’re always down three or four runs after the second inning. To get out front, it allows us to be a little more aggressive and do a few things, and just lets you settle into the baseball game.”

Jacob Smith and Spencer Faulkner added RBI hits in the fourth along with a run scored on an error, extending the Braves’ lead to 12-2.

North Greenville scored two in the fifth, pulling to a 12-4 gap, but got no closer; O’Connor’s second homer of the game came on a seventh-inning moonshot that provided the exclamation point to the Braves’ win.

O’Connor, Smith, Hinson and Will Hood had two hits apiece for the Braves, with four RBIs from O’Connor and two from Rezek. O’Connor and Rezek also scored three times each, with Smith and Andrew Jenner crossing home plate twice.

Kasen McCawley gave up two runs on three hits in two innings with one strikeout after starting for UNCP. Spencer Ledford allowed two runs on one hit in 2 1/3 innings with one strikeout; Jake Inman (3-1), who was credited with the win, pitched 2 2/3 innings of scoreless relief with two hits allowed and two strikeouts for the Braves. Reece Fields (6-1) took the loss for the Crusaders.

“We decided we were going to run guys out there at a short clip, because our bullpen’s been very good, and so we tried that,” O’Neil said. “Kasen got us off to a good start and we piecemealed it after that.”

Game Two

O’Connor opened the scoring in the second game as well, with a two-RBI double to the right-center-field gap in the third inning to plate Rezek and Jenner, allowing the Braves to play from in front yet again.

“Momentum is a huge thing in this game,” O’Connor said. “As long as you get it on your side, in your dugout, everybody else gets fired up and they go, and it helps everybody play to the best of their ability.”

North Greenville twice cut the Braves’ lead to one run; a two-run second, including a David Lewis solo homer, made it a 3-2 game, then after a Carlos Amezquita RBI double for the Braves, Dakota Britt’s solo homer for North Greenville cut the lead to 4-3 in the fifth.

Braves closer Chase Jernigan relieved starter Jonathon Jacobs in the sixth inning, and earned a four-inning save, his sixth of the season, allowing just two hits in a scoreless outing with six strikeouts.

“Every one of (the scoreless innings) is big,” Jernigan said. “That’s been my role for the last three years, and I try to come in and just compete every single time and do my best for the guys.”

“I felt like (Jacobs) used every ounce of what he had in the fifth to get us in the dugout, so he wasn’t happy, but I went to Chase, and Chase went out there and gave us four really strong innings,” O’Neil said. “Last week Chase went five. Chase has been in the program a long time, five years. He’s gotten better each year and his role has gotten bigger and bigger each year for us, and he’s a fifth-year senior right now, and he’s ‘give me the ball, let me go, and at the end of the year I’ll ice my arm.’

The Braves added single runs in the sixth, on an Amezquita RBI single, and the eighth, on a Hinson sacrifice fly, both of which scored Jake Bradley.

The offensive insurance runs were punctuated when the Braves defense turned an inning-ending double play as Jernigan pitched in the eighth with the potential tying run at the plate.

“We’ve had some guys that have kind of not had the best success out there, and I’m glad they came up when it mattered and just got it done for us,” Jernigan said.

Amezquita and Faulkner had two hits each in the nightcap, with Amezquita adding two RBIs and two walks.

Jacobs (3-0) earned the win after allowing three runs on four hits with two walks and two strikeouts in five innings. Crusaders starter Nate Lamb (1-1) took the loss, allowing four runs on six hits over his 5 1/3 innings, striking out four against five walks.