Wednesday's prep baseball: Du Quoin out-slugs Benton
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Margins-even those wide and comfortable-are never safe at cozy Eovaldi Field in the Benton Community Park.
Du Quoin High School's baseball team nearly learned that lesson the hard way Wednesday afternoon.
Building an eight-run lead by mid-game and a 13-run edge heading into the fifth inning, the Indians held on for dear life and eventually wore down a hard-hitting Benton squad.
The score was 24-18 as Du Quoin improved its record to 16-8 entering Thursday's trip to Waltonville/Sesser-Valier.
Benton is 16-5.
"Good thing we came out and hit the ball today," Indians coach Tim Craft said. "Even when we were up 18 to 5 in the bottom of the 5th the lead did not feel comfortable. We made two or three costly errors that gave them a few of their runs but Benton can flat out hit the ball. We had some guys really come up big for us at the plate today when we needed it. We were down 5-1 and scored 10 runs in the third to break the game open."
The Tribe battered a trio of Benton pitchers for 22 hits, with all nine players in Craft's line-up stroking at least one safety.
J.C. Davis, Drew Bennett and Jake Stanhouse all recorded four hits with Bennett (six RBI) and Stanhouse (four RBI) doing their fare share of damage.
Tyler Shelton, Sam Gossett, Brandon George and Trent Bigham had two hits with Seth Baxter and Kyle Kelley rounding out the basehit parade,
"Drew Bennett had some huge hits for us today," Craft said. "He really swung the bat great for us along with Jake Stanhouse and J.C. Davis. This is a good win for us coming back from a tough loss to A-J the day before. Benton is one of the top teams around."
Bennett's bases loaded double was the key blow in Du Quoin's 10-run fourth inning uprising.
Bigham (5-1) was the winning hurler, working into the fifth and striking ou five,
Kegan Robbins and Gossett finished up.