Leopards bounce back with dominate win over Hope
Coming off their loss to the Bauxite Miners last week, the Malvern Leopards bounced back with a 14-1 win against the Hope Bobcats Tuesday.
The Leopards set the tone early with Tyler Golden and it carried on through the next five innings of the game. The Leopards were able to take the lead early with three runs in the first inning. The Leopards then added one run in the second inning, but came back with five runs in both the third and fourth innings to lead 14-0. Malvern’s Evan Myers capped off scoring with a two-run home run in the bottom of the fourth. The Leopards gave up one run to the Bobcats in the top of the fifth but were able to secure the win by getting the third out.
In total, the Leopards had 14 runs on 13 hits while holding the Bobcats to one run on two hits. On the mound for the Leopards was Robert Bowman who pitched 4.1 innings and Chace McCalister who pitched .9 of an inning. Bowman threw 11 first pitch strikes and had six strikeouts. McCalister had one strikeout in Tuesday’s game.
On getting the bounce back win, Leopards’ head coach Jordan Knight said that he and his staff tell the Leopards that it’s easy at times to try to look ahead or look back at games instead of focusing on the game in front of them. “What we tell the kids is we have dreams we want to accomplish, which is to win conference championships, regional championships, state championships, so our biggest rival is the team that’s in front of us that day,” he said. “So today our biggest rival was Hope so our plan was to attack the game, play as hard as we could, throw strikes, see balls deep in the zone, and then try to get base hits as much as we can and put pressure on them.” I thought we did a good job of that early, Tyler (Golden) set the tone early and that allowed us to carry that on for the rest of the game.”
The Leopards are now set to rematch the Nashville Scrappers Friday at Morrison Park. The Scrappers were able to defeat the Leopards earlier this season in Nashville, but Knight said that the Leopards’ focus is on themselves. “They’re the number one team in the state still, according to the rankings, so the way that we prepare for it is we prepare to be the best that we can possibly be,” he said. “We can’t control Nashville, we can’t control who they pitch or how they play but we can control our attitude, our effort, and our energy. So if we control those things then that puts us in good positions to be successful. So what we want our kids to know is that they can win in any environment or any situation and I think we’ll be ready for it.”
Game time between the Leopards and Scrappers is set for 5 p.m.