By By Austin Bishop / EMG regional sports director
March 7, 2004
The West Lauderdale Knights let their bats do the talking on Saturday, as they banged out 23 hits and scored 28 runs on the way to winning a pair of games and running their record to 8-0 on the season.
WL opened the day with a 15-1 road win over Quitman and closed it out in style by taking a 13-7 Region 5-3A home victory over arch-rival Newton County High School.
The region win pushed the Knights to 3-0 in league play. West Lauderdale has a busy week ahead of it, as the Knights play five games, including three against region foes.
West Lauderdale hosts non-division foe Union on Monday, travels to Region 5-3A opponent West Lauderdale on Tuesday and host division rival Choctaw Central on Friday.
Saturday sees the knights visiting Union for a 1 p.m. game, before returning home to host Carthage in a division game that night.
It looked like West Lauderdale was going to be able to beat Newton County by the rule on Friday night, as a five-run fourth put the Knights up 10-0.
But Newton County, now 5-2 on the season, scored four in the fifth and three in the sixth to make a game out of it.
West Lauderdale took a 3-0 lead in the first thanks to an RBI single by Dave Woods and a sacrifice fly by Parker Temple. An RBI ground out by Austin Davis and a run-scoring infield single by Caleb Dulaney in the third helped WL stretch its lead out to 5-0.
It looked like the Knights would put the Cougars away in the bottom of the fourth when a pair of errors kept WL alive long enough to go up 10-0 on a two-run single to center by Cory Hart.
Newton County refused to make things easy on the Knights, however. Josh Sheehan led off the top of the fifth with a triple to right. The Cougars managed to score four runs in the inning, thanks to a two-run double by Taylor Nichols and a run-scoring two-bagger by Jared Cavenaugh.
WL threatened to win by the run-rule again in the bottom of the fifth, thank to a two-run homer by Woods and a run by Tyler Vick on a wild pitch. But Newton County managed to strand the winner runner on second.
The Cougars then scored three more runs in the top of the second, two coming on a single to right by Bud Loper.
Hart picked up the win on the mound for the Knights. The left-hander sailed through the first four innings, allowing just one hit until the first batter of the fifth. He finished with four strikeouts, two walks and four hits in 4.1 innings of work.
Bo Davis and Temple had two singles for WL, while Drew Snider had a double and Woods had a homer and single.
Will Pearson had two singles for Newton County.
West Lauderdale 15
Quitman 1
West Lauderdale scored three in the first, two in the second, one in the third, two in the fourth and seven in the fifth on the way to the easy win over homestanding Quitman.
Tyler Vick banged out two doubles and a single for the Knights, while Bo Davis also went three-for-four at the plate with a double. Dave Woods had a double and single for the Knights.
Temple upped his record to 3-0 with the victory, while Adam Harper took the loss for Quitman.
The Panthers host Vicksburg at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, and Bay Springs at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, followed by Kosciusko at 8 p.m. in the Quitman High School Invitational. Warren Central is also entered in the event.