El Dorado bats stay hot against Sheridan
AMERICAN LEGION AAA STATE TOURNAMENT EL DORADO 9, SHERIDAN 2
CONWAY — Not even a prolonged weather delay could keep El Dorado from continuing its impressive late-season surge.
The Oilers pounded out 11 hits and got a steady performance on the mound from Jake Eubanks to blow past Sheridan 9-2 in the winner’s bracket of the AAA American Legion state tournament at Bear Stadium on the University of Central Arkansas campus.
Eubanks finished with three hits and two RBI while Rhett Richardson had two hits and three RBI for El Dorado (27-8-1), which has won its last eight games by an average of nearly six runs and scored at least nine runs in each of its first three games of the state tournament.
“I tell you what, we’ve been raking it these past few games,” El Dorado Coach Greg Harrison said of his team’s hitting. “We’re swinging the bats as well as we have all year, and at just the right time. We know we’ve got sound defense, and we know we’ve got the arms to compete with anybody.
“We’ve just got to come out here and swing the bats, and we’ve really been swinging them here of late.”
Sawyer Cropper also had a pair of hits as El Dorado beat Sheridan for the fourth time this season. Eubanks scattered 9 hits and struck out 2 in 7 complete innings for the Oilers, who’ll play in today’s winner’s bracket semifinal at 3 p.m.
But El Dorado had to wait a while to reserve its spot.
The game was slated to begin at 5 p.m., but it was delayed for two hours because of severe weather. Heavy rain and lightning moved into the area during the fifth inning of the previous elimination game between Fort Smith and Texarkana, which prompted officials to pull players off the field just after 4 p.m. That game was eventually restarted at approximately 6:05 p.m., with Fort Smith pulling away for a 5-2 victory.
When El Dorado and Sheridan finally got underway at 7 p.m., the Yellow Jackets wasted little time jumping out front when Peyton Hill darted home on a throwing error in the top of the first inning to put his team on top 1-0.
The Oilers answered back in its first at-bat and tied things up after Eubanks scored on a dropped fly ball by the Yellowjackets. From that point, it was all El Dorado.
Richardson, Eubanks and Josh Saulsbury all had run-scoring hits in the second inning to help give the Oilers a 5-1 lead. El Dorado would later score two runs in both the fifth and sixth innings to extend its cushion, which was more than enough for Eubanks to work with.
The former Smackover hurler didn’t allow an extra-base hit until the seventh inning when Tony Nanneman ripped a double to the right-field wall. Prior to that, he’d run into serious trouble only once, and that came when Sheridan loaded the bases in the fifth inning with one out.
“He’s a competitor,” Harrison explained. “He knows that he can get it done because his confidence is there. When [Sheridan] loaded the bases, I just had to go out there, talk to him and calm him down. I told him that it was OK to throw a ground ball. Get one in that particular situation, and you get a double play.
“He told me, ‘Coach, I got this’. And I trusted him.”
Moments after Harrison’s mound visit, Eubanks got Jackson Sorey to hit into a double play that ended the threat. Sheridan did get a run in the top of the seventh on a RBI-double from Gage Kuttenkuler, but the Yellowjackets wouldn’t get any closer than that.
Now, El Dorado is just a victory away from playing for a state title.
“We’ve just got to keep it up,” Harrison said. “We know whoever we’ve got, we’ve got to bring it, continue to do what we’ve been doing. It doesn’t matter if its Cabot or Russellville, we’ve got to be able to swing the bats and put up runs.”