The Mountain Grove Panthers’ baseball team knew their hopes of winning back-to-back South Central Association (SCA) Conference titles could hinge on a road match-up at Houston last week.
The Panthers led Houston 5-0 through six innings before Houston responded with a three-run bottom half of the sixth.
Fortunately, Brayden Haughey added an insurance run with an RBI single in the Panthers’ final at-bat, scoring Brylon Mayberry. Then pitcher Hoyt Mathews pitched himself out of a jam to close out a 6-3 victory. The win avenged a 10-2 loss to the Tigers in the Houston Tournament back on March 24.
Preston Williams had two RBIs; both Gatlin Keeling and Haughey had one RBI and scored one run; Drew Vaughan had three hits and scored twice; while Kaden Richardson and Mayberry both scored one run.
On the mound, Mayberry tossed five and a third innings, allowing one earned run on three hits with nine strikeouts and three walks. Mathews tossed one and two-thirds innings of shutout ball, giving up one hit with one strikeout and one walk.
Mountain Grove opened their week with a dominating 10-0 win over SCA foe Thayer.
The Panthers had four runs in the bottom of the fourth before cruising to the win.
Richardson had two hits and three RBIs; Keeling added two RBIs and three runs scored; Mathews had two RBIs; Haughey added one RBI and one run scored; Dom Palagi and Vaughan both scored two runs; while both Destin Unger and Brock Byerly scored one run. On the mound, Mathews tossed four and a third innings of shutout ball. He gave up one hit and had eight strikeouts and one walk. Mayberry tossed one and two-thirds innings of shutout ball, striking out five batters and walking one.
Mountain Grove also had a win over Coach Mark Vaughan’s former program from Plato on Tuesday. Two pitchers combined to shutout the Eagles, 4-0.
Carson Allen had a solid outing with five innings of shutout ball. He allowed two hits and struck out six with two walks. Mayberry tossed two scoreless innings and struck out three.
Mayberry had two RBIs; Allen added one RBI; Vaughan scored twice; while both Garrett Hutsell and Palagi scored one run.
