HRs help Bentonville edge Northside

FORT SMITH — A pair of homers helped Bentonville win their second straight one-run conference game on Tuesday.

Bryson DeLozier and Eli McCall homered in the fifth inning to send Bentonville into its open week in the 6A-West with a 4-3 win over Fort Smith Northside at Hunts Park.

Bentonville (13-9, 8-6) is open next week before closing conference play against Springdale on May 1- 2. Northside (11-13, 4-8) plays two games against Springdale next week and closes against Rogers Heritage.

Monday, Bentonville escaped a bases- loaded jam with no outs in the seventh inning to win 8-7.

Tuesday, Carter Nye and Connor Adair combined for another one-run victory again escaping jams at opportune times.

“Close games and finding a way to win,” Bentonville coach Todd Abbott said. “The end goal is to win the game. We’ve been able to pull those out the last couple of nights.”

J.J. Spafford singled home Boyce Read in the fourth inning for the first run of the game, and Northside tied it in the bottom half of the inning on a run-scoring single by catcher Alex Martinez that scored KyVeon Perkins.

DeLozier opened the fifth inning with a homer to left, and McCall added a two-run shot to left-center field into the pee-wee football bleachers for a 4-1 lead.

Again, Northside answered, loading the bases in the bottom of the fifth before Perkins legged out a one-out double that scored Andrew Taylor and Mason Kincannon, and sent Eli Caldarera to third.

Nye coaxed an infield pop out and then got a called third strike to escape further damage and keep Bentonville’s lead intact.

“It was a big momentum shift,” Abbott said. “Any ball there in play probably scores a run so to get off the field to prevent any kind of offensive momentum helped.”

Adair earned the save with two scoreless innings.

“Exactly as it went to plan,” Abbott said. “Since we put Carter in our conference rotation, he’s been awesome on the mound. He’s given us quality starts every time out. Connor, we’ve been going to him in relief in these conference games and he’s done exactly what we saw today. He’s a competitor.”

Nye won his second straight game, in his fourth conference start, in addition to throwing five innings and allowing one hit in last week’s 5-1 win over Rogers Heritage.

Tuesday, he needed just 65 pitches to go five innings and struck out six.

Adair also earned a win last week in Bentonville’s thrilling 6-5 win over Rogers Heritage.

“It’s tough when you come into situations like that, but it’s fun and I love it,” Adair said. “I just have to trust my defense.”

Tuesday, he plunked Jayden Weiler with one out in the fifth inning but induced a double-play grounder.

“That was huge,” Adair said. “It was big to get out of the inning with a runner on first.”

He also hit a batter with two outs in the seventh inning but got a called third strike to end it.

“The two-seam was really working and messing their hitters up,” Adair said. “It was causing a lot of missed swings on their part.”

Northside left five runners on, including four in scoring position and dropped its fourth conference game by two runs or less.

“Monday, it was a bunch of walks in a row,” Northside coach Will Hankins said. “We balked a run in and walked another run. If we avoid that big inning there, we win game one. Today, they the two home runs and if anybody puts the ball up in 20 mileper-hour winds, anybody is going to hit one out. We battled back. I thought we played well enough to win, we just couldn’t get the last one.”