Coach Chris Cauble’s West club defeated Harding 9-5 here Thursday night in the completion of a protested game that had originally been won by Harding 8-5 on March 3 in Charlotte.

Žest sophomore Ben Hampton hit his second game-winning home run in less than 24 hours in the top of the seventh inning to spark the Falcons’ four-run rally that broke a 5-all tie.

Harding’s ace right-hander, Spencer Anthony, then blanked the Falcons on three hits as Harding took a 2-0 victory in the regularly scheduled game to even the score for the day.

Cauble protested that Harding used an illegal substitution in the bottom of the fifth inning of the March 3 contest, and his protest was upheld. The game resumed with the score tied 5-5 in the last of the fifth.

Jared Barnette started West’s four-run seventh with a walk. Hampton, who had belted a seventh-inning homer to top previously undefeated East Rowan 4-3 on Wednesday, then hit a high fly down the right field line for another game-winner. The Falcons added two more runs on a walk, error and Shawn Trosper’s single.

“I was very pleased with the way we came out and swung the bat in the ending of that protested game,” said Cauble. “I told them the team that was ready for the first one would win, and they were ready from the start. It was a big win for us to erase one of our losses and get a win in the conference.”

The Falcons, after losing the second game, stand 6-6 in the 3A SouthPiedmont Conference and 8-8 overall. Harding is 6-5 and 9-7.

“Then, in the second game, we just kind of relaxed. We got runners in scoring position and didn’t get timely hits, or didn’t put the ball in play when we should have. We struck out way too many times,” said Cauble.

Anthony struck out 12 Falcons — five on called third strikes — and allowed only four balls to be hit out of the infield.

“He’s a pretty good pitcher. He mixed in a curveball a lot. It’s the same pitch that we were taking in the protested game. We were swinging at it in the second game. Our mental approach wasn’t as good. He did a good job of keeping us off-balance,” said Cauble.

Anthony, 4-2 for the season, was the losing pitcher in the first game, pitching the final two innings, so he worked nine innings for the night, striking out 17 batters.

“When he wants to be, he’s a great pitcher,” said coach Chris Scholl of the Rams. “He comes from a great family. His did (Richard) threw at Georgia, so he knows what he’s doing. As a junior, it’s probably the best game he’s thrown in a varsity uniform. He did the job that we had to have in that second ballgame.”

Scholl wasn’t happy that the Rams had to replay the last part of the protested game.

“We shouldn’t even have been here. It’s just something that umpires basically didn’t do, which, in my opinion, they should have done,” he said. “The umpires should have checked the rule book, because we asked them the question before we ever did what we did, and they said we could do it.”

He explained that Harding had a courtesy runner score a run in the protested fifth inning. Scholl put the runner back in the game as a pinch-runner later in the inning.

“We just didn’t come ready to play,” he said of the first game. “Then we got good pitching and good defense and did what we needed to do to win.”

West, which travels to Northwest Cabarrus at 7 p.m. today, now probably needs to win its last four games to have a chance at finishing in the top three in the SPC’s battle for playoff berths.

“Everybody that is above us has to play each other. Those teams are all going to get losses,” said Cauble, whose Falcons visit Kannapolis A. L. Brown and Concord before hosting Piedmont next week.