Baseball falls at Greenwood

The Panthers must win Thursday at Texarkana to keep their season alive.

GREENWOOD — The Siloam Springs baseball team’s postseason fate is pretty cut and dried: Win or go home.

The Panthers dropped a 9-2 decision at Greenwood on Monday in the opening round of the 6A-West Conference Tournament.

Siloam Springs, the No. 7 seed, will now travel to No. 6 Texarkana in an elimination game scheduled for 5 p.m. on Thursday. Texarkana lost its opening round game to No. 3 Russellville 12-3 on Monday afternoon.

The winner of Thursday’s game between the Panthers and Razorbacks will advance to the Class 6A state tournament, which is May 11-13 in Benton, while the loser’s season will be over.

The Panthers (11-16) will have to play a lot better Thursday against the Razorbacks than they did Monday against Greenwood in order to keep their season alive.

Siloam Springs committed six errors and walked eight batters in the loss, despite only giving up four hits to Greenwood. The Bulldogs (24-6) advance to Thursday’s winner’s bracket semifinals against Russellville.

Greenwood has beaten Siloam Springs in all three meetings this season with Cooper Van Kooten picking up the win on the mound in each of the games. Van Kooten (8-1) struck out eight batters in the victory.

Greenwood took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning and then scored six runs on just one hit in the bottom of the second to go up 7-0.

The Panthers got a run back in the top of the third after Chandler Cook singled and came around to score on an RBI single by Chance Junkermann.

Greenwood answered with a single run in the fourth and fifth innings.

Siloam Springs scored

its second run in the sixth when a Greenwood error allowed Nolan Wallis to score.

Siloam Springs and Greenwood had four

hits apiece.

Dawson Armstrong took the loss for the Panthers, pitching 3 2/3 innings with three earned runs, three

strikeouts and eight walks. Eli Hawbaker pitched the final 2 1/3 innings and allowed one run and two hits.