Coal City – In the Class AAA Region 3 rat race, each win is important. But Greenbrier East seems to be pulling ahead of the southern pack.
The Spartans pounded out 13 hits Tuesday, steadily attacking Independence to secure a 10-6 win over the Patriots in Coal City.
The win gives East a season sweep of Independence as postseason play approaches improving the Spartans to 9-2 in regional play with contests against Sissonville and PikeView being the last two remaining regional matchups for them.
“We obviously take the next game as the next game and try to get better throughout the season,” East head coach Corey Mann said. “We played Ripley and Sissonville both on the road, doubleheader in one day. Lost a two-run game and a one-run game. We got Sissonville coming back to our place this Saturday.
“That’s our only two losses in triple-A, so everything else is quad-A losses, which I think you gotta kind of respect that a little bit. We’ve got some quad-A wins as well but we’re just trying to put ourselves in the best situation. Obviously everybody wants to play at home and that’s kind of what we’re shooting for.”
Tuesday’s win was a step in the right direction for that goal. Coming off a 14-2 toppling of Nicholas County on Monday, the Spartans carried over their momentum at the plate scoring in every inning but the first and seventh.
Their breakout frame was third where they plated five runs and built a cushion that came into play later.
Tied 1-1 heading into the third, Nelson Lynch ignited East with a leadoff single before Indy secured a groundout. The big inning snowballed from there with the next six batters reaching base. A single from Graham Brewster plated Lynch with Ashton Cochran following with a walk. Brady May delivered a two-run single to make it 4-1 with Layne Lambert driving in a pair two batters later with a single of his own.
The hit barrage carried into the fourth inning where East strung together four extra-base hits with Brewster and May again driving in a run each.
“I think we were disciplined at the plate, right?” Mann said. “We waited on finding our pitch to hit and we did a good job right there fouling the baseball, hitting it hard and low, like we preach. And they executed well.”
Down 8-1 Independence pieced together a five-run inning in the bottom of the fourth to remain alive.
Reid Warden started it with a double, reached third on a wild pitch and scored on a Micah Cuthbert single. Andrew Coalson knocked in the next run with a one-out single before Levi Barnett tripled to plate two more. Degan Williams lit the last firework with another single, putting the Patriots right back in the game at 8-6.
But East pitcher Brady May locked in, blanking the Patriots the rest of the way. His offense gave him. cushion as well with a run each in the fifth and sixth inning courtesy of an RBI each from Zion Detko and Eli Green.
“We hit the ball hard right at them,” Independence head coach Scotty Cuthbert said. “We hit it hard at thew third baseman, we hit it right at the shortstop. If we hit two balls three feet left or right, that’s different sometimes. But that’s baseball. The boy threw a lot of strikes and when he got in trouble he came back and started mixing off-speed a little more. We battled and the bottom of the lineup was doing nice for us.”
The loss drops Indy to 4-5 in regional play with Princeton, Herbert Hoover and Sissonville still on the schedule.
“You don’t want to be in the bottom two,” Cuthbert said of the nine-team region. “I thought last night was important, being able to sweep PikeView and we wanted to see what we could do here tonight, maybe steal this one. We’re 7-14 overall but we’re just barely under .500 in the region. Our out-of-conference schedule has been brutal. We won the games we were supposed to out of the section. We’ve been 50-50 in the middle.
“If we can finished in the middle, that gives you a chance. We’ve got an important one Thursday if we get to get it in and Saturday as well. It’s a test to see if you can play in tournament. You’re still trying to build to get there because once that tournament starts, it doesn’t matter what everybody’s record is.”
Brewster led East with three hits in the win while May earned the win, going the distance.
Coalson went 3-for-3 to pace Indy while Barnett and Williams drove in two runs each for Independence.
