BASEBALL: Pinckneyville crushes Steeleville 12-2
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The baseball Panthers won their second straight game on Thursday, short-gaming Steeleville 12-2 behind five solid innings on the mound and two RBI's at the plate by C.J. Opp.
"I thought we did a good job of playing solid in a lot of areas today," said Panthers' head coach Alan Engelhardt. "We weren't great swinging the bats, but we put enough good swings on the ball in scoring situations to put up some runs."
The Warriors strung together three hits in the first to take a 1-0 lead, but the Panthers pounced back with seven in the second and five more in the third.
"Defensively, we did a pretty good job of once again not making very many mistakes," Engelhardt said. "In the first inning, after we walked the leadoff batter and Steeleville singled, Marian Brammeier did a very nice job of throwing the ball through the cutoff, and Bryant Shute made a good throw to third for the first out. Because of the good relay, we were able to hold them to one run and stay away from the big inning."
Brandon Long drove in a pair with his single in the second, and Matthew Nichols, Bryant Shute and Justin Bumann had RBI base hits in the third.
Opp (2-0) retired seven in a row after allowing the run in the first, then allowed an unearned run to cross in the fourth before shutting the door again. The Panther hurler struck out seven Warriors, walked two, and surrendered four hits on the afternoon.
"C.J. didn't have his best stuff today, which is probably our fault for not getting him enough innings recently, but he gutted through it and made pitches when he needed to," Engelhardt said.
Joey Burris (2-2, BB, 2 R) was the only Panther with two hits, Long (1-2, BB, 2 R, 2 RBI), Nichols (1-2, BB, R, RBI), Shute (1-2, BB, 2 R, RBI), Hunter Queen (1-3, 2 R), Evan Chapman (1-1) and Justin Bumann (1-1, BB, RBI) had the others. Adam Barczewski was 0-for-2, but walked, scored ,and had an RBI.
Pinckneyville (5-2) is at Marion on Saturday with the first pitch scheduled for 11:00 a.m.
"We need to keep improving and have a solid outing against Marion on Saturday to get us moving into conference play next Monday on a positive note," said Engelhardt.