Tuesday's SIRR baseball: Tribe knocks PCHS from title chase
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[One Perry County baseball team kept its River-to-River Conference title hopes alive Tuesday afternoon. The other saw its Mississippi Division championship odds reduce drastically.
Du Quoin (13-7, 5-3) held to oust arch-rival Pinckneyville (10-10, 4-3) 5-3 at the Ballpark at DHS as junior pitcher Brandon George twirled a nifty four-hitter.
Both local squads step out of league play Wednesday-the Indians visit Steeleville while Pinckneyville hosts Murphysboro-before ending the week with SIRR duals against Anna-Jonesboro and Sparta, respectively.
"Brandon George was just great today," Indians coach Tim Craft saud. "The defense played really well behind him. It was a good team effort."
In the opening frame, Du Quoin plated the game's first run after Tyler Shelton worked Panther starter Drew Dudek (3-2) for a one-out walk.
Shelton moved to second on George's single and then raced to third base on a wild pitch.
Jake Stanhouse then send Shelton home on a groundball out, giving Du Quoin a lead it would never relinquish.
With the score still 1-0, the Indians added another tally in the fourth when an infield hit by Kegan Robbins scored Drew Bennett for a 2-0 lead.
Bennett walked, advanced to second after another wild pitch and moved to third one out later on Seth Baxter's basehit. Robbins legged out a bouncer between the mound and shorstop, producing the second run.
"There's not a lot to say about this one that hasn't been repeated over and over this season," Pinckneyville coach Alan Engelhardt said. "You cannot expect to be completely disinterested for the majority of the game and hope to win in the end."
George surrendered a leadoff double to Dudek and then retired 18 of the next 21 batters. Striking out four, he worked around two hit batsmen and didn't issue a walk.
Du Quoin added two very important insurance runs in the fifth as Shelton and George rapped singles.
A throwing error by Dudek produced the first run with Trent Bigham's RBI single pushing the lead to 4-0.
Pinckneyville ralled in the seventh with its two unearned markers as Adam Barczewski and singled and Marian Brammeier scored the second run with a fielders choice.
PCHS loaded the bases but Dudek's sharp grounder to Indian shortstop retired the side and ended things.
"I am really proud for our kids," Craft said. "They came ready to play. We just need to keep that intensity every game."
George and Baxter each had two hits for Du Quoin with Shelton, Bigham and Robbins also marking.
Christian Shopinski, Brandon Long, Dudek and Barczewski connected on the Panther safeties.
Dudek worked the first four innings before Bryant Shute relieved.
"We have fallen back and are now out of the conference race," Engelhardt said. "The frustrating point is we are not getting better. We have about 15 games to get ready for the regional so we need to see what we can do to improve in that time frame."
Anna-Jonesboro (6-2) took over sole possession of the league lead with a win over Nashville (5-3) Tuesday. Nashville and Du Quoin are tied for third with Sparta (4-4) and Pinckneyville now sharing fourth place.