Baseball picks up road win at Prairie Grove
PRAIRIE GROVE — The Siloam Springs baseball team picked up a nonconference win 7-3 on Monday against Prairie Grove.
The game was a late addition to the Panthers’ schedule.
Siloam Springs scored a run in the top of the first but gave up two runs to the Tigers in the bottom of the inning.
The Panthers bounced back to score three runs in the second to take the lead for good and added a run in the fourth and two more in the fifth. Prairie Grove scored its final run in the bottom of the fifth.
Sophomore L.T. Ellis picked up the win for Siloam Springs, pitching five innings with three earned runs, six hits, four walks and four strikeouts.
Ellis struggled early but came around in the later innings and pitched well, said head coach Alan Hardcastle.
“When you throw first-pitch strikes, the game of baseball is awesome,” Hardcastle said. “L.T. was pounding the zone.”
Senior Josh Hunt pitched two scoreless innings to close out the victory for the Panthers (11-14), who played at Greenwood on Tuesday in their final game of the regular season. Results were not available at presstime.
“Meredith pitched a great game,” Sisson said. “She had two walks and a hit batter and gave up only (two) hits. When you play good defense and pitch and get good hitting, you’re going to win.”
In the previous win against Russellville, Siloam Springs had nine hits and led 5-0 going into the seventh inning before Russellville scored any runs.
“Last time we played them we hit the ball well,” Wright said. “This time we didn’t. We never put the pressure on them to make them make mistakes. That really was the difference in the game.”
The Lady Panthers’ only base runners on Monday were on a pair of singles by Aislyn Burchette and Maranada Guntharp, two hit batters to Yazmine Alfaro and Rachel Mann and a walk drawn by Sidney Smith.
“The bottom line is we’re just a little cold with the bats,” Wright said. “We’re not putting enough hits together to really put the pressure on other teams, and that’s really what’s costing us. The biggest thing is our bats have kind of went cold, and we’ve got to pick it up on offense. That’s really the area we’ve got to improve in.”
Siloam Springs was scheduled to play its final regular season game on Tuesday against Greenwood at La-Z-Boy Park. Results were not available at presstime.
The Lady Panthers are scheduled to begin 6A-West Conference Tournament play on Saturday. Siloam Springs is likely to be a low seed in the tournament and have to travel for the duration of the tournament, which determines what teams advance to the Class 6A State Tournament in Benton on May 11-13.
“On Saturday we’ll go wherever it takes us,” Wright said. “It’s probably looking right now like we’re going to go to Greenwood, more than likely. We won’t know that officially until at least Wednesday. Bottom line is we’ve got to be ready to play, and we’ve got to get our offense going. And that’s really the area that we’ve got to start showing the aggressiveness and get our confidence back.”
Russellville 10, Siloam Springs 0
Russellville 330 211 — 10 11 1 Siloam Springs 000 000 — 0 2 2 Duffield and Harrison; Spry and Alfaro. W - Duffield, 6-7. L - Spry, 3-11. HR - Duffield (3).