Wednesday's prep baseball: Pinckneyville works overtime to down Red Bud
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Held hitless through the first six innings, Pinckneyille Community High School's baseball bats gathered enough life to ease past Red Bud in nine innings Wednesday at Rigdon Field.
The 2-1 contest ended on Michael Rakers' two-out RBI single in the last of the ninth.
Rakers' safety scored Bryant Shute, who led off the frame with an infield hit. Shute also forced extra frames by belting a solo home run in the seventh.
Drew Dudek and C.J. Opp (4-2) combined to strike out a dozen Musketeers and scattered 10 hits. Dudek worked the first eight, whiffing 11.
"We had a very nice pitching outing again from Drew Dudek and C.J. Opp came in and threw a solid inning for us," Panthers coach Alan Engelhardt said. "Defensively, we had a solid game, but again, we need to get away from making the couple of errors we had. Offensively, we have to start getting some production throughout the game instead of going from the first to sixth inning without a hit. Bryant came up with the big home run to get us to extra innings and then got us going in the ninth with a hustle single deep into the hole at shortstop."
Rakers and Shute enjoyed two-hit efforts for PCHS with Landon Chandler, Adam Barczewski and Matthew Nichols adding hits.
The Panthers are idle until Monday's trip to Carterville.