BASEBALL: Du Quoin loses seventh straight
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[DuQuoin High School Baseball only managed to score two runs against Carterville in a 9-2 losing effort on Tuesday.
This was DuQuoin's first conference game of the season, and they had to travel to Carterville. While DuQuoin had a good first inning scoring two runs on two hits, they continue to struggle throughout the game. DuQuoin was unable to score in any other inning of the game.
In the top of the first inning, Seth Baxter led off with a double. Kegan Robbins bunted him to third with a sacrifice. J.C. Davis walked followed by a Jake Stanhouse RBI ground out. Baxter scored, Davis went to second, and Brandon George doubled to right field scoring Davis. DuQuoin scored their only two runs of the game in the first inning. Carterville scored one in the first, two in the third inning, one in the fifth, and 5 in the sixth.
DuQuoin only managed four hits in the game. Seth Baxter was 1-4 with a double. J.C. Davis was 2-2, both doubles. Jake Stanhouse was 0-2, but had an RBI. Brandon George was 1-2 with an RBI double.
DuQuoin used three pitchers in the contest. Trent Bigham started the game going 4 innings, allowing 3 hits, 4 earned runs, had 6 walks, and 5 strikeouts. Connor Wheeler went the next 1 1/3 innings allowing 2 hits, 5 runs (1 earned), 1 walk and 3 strikeouts. Brenden Fred finished up with 2/3 of an inning, allowing no runs or hits. Bigham got the loss; his record is 1-2. DuQuoin's overall record is 1-7 and 0-1 in the Conference.
Coach Tim Craft was obviously disappointed with the loss. "Two of our hits came in the first inning. We cannot expect to be successful if we don't start making adjustments at the plate. Once again, we failed to put the ball in play and struck out way too much."
"Our pitchers walked 8 batters today. However, we also did not make plays behind them later in the game. You cannot commit 3 errors in one inning and expect to keep teams from having a big inning. We just keep finding ways to lose."
DuQuoin travels to Freeburg on Wednesday for a non-conference game.