E’town wallops Cougars in Green County Wood Bat Tourney

briley-plate
briley-plate

The distressing season of the Cougar baseball team continued on Saturday in the Green County Wooden Bat Tournament with a 15-2 loss to the Elizabethtown Panthers in six innings, and an 11-3 loss to the host Green County Dragons. Winless at 0-5, the Cougars have given up 64 runs while scoring just seven.

Senior Braxton Hodges started for the Cougars against E’town and pitched well until injuring himself in a rundown play in the second inning.  Hodges retired the first two Panther batters in the first inning, but gave up a solo home run to Panther catcher Jackson Webb in the band-box Green County stadium. Trailing 1-0, Hodges doubled into the right-field corner in the bottom of the first, driving in courtesy runner Caden Woodcock to tie the game 1-1.

Hodges tried to advance to third on the play at the plate, but was caught in a rundown. As he tried to elude the tag, the senior rolled his ankle and was tagged out to end the inning.

The right-hander went back to the mound and worked a scoreless second inning, but when he walked the leadoff batter in the third, head coach Danny Clark replaced him with Alex Scott and Hodges retired to the dugout to ice down his injury.

A walk, a double and a single up the middle plated three more Panther runs. Scott struck out Paul Fiepke for the first out before pitcher Coleman Clark ripped a line drive into left-center. Cougar left-fielder Andrew Haycraft tracked the ball down, only to see it glance off his glove for a run-scoring error to make it 5-1.

Scott pitched well after that retiring the next two batters to end the inning, then pitching two scoreless innings, including a 1-2-3 fifth inning. But the sophomore ran out of gas in the fifth inning. The Panthers sent 15 batters to the plate and scored 10 runs, eight of them against Scott. The other two came off senior reliever Rylee Shoemaker.

The Cougars had scored an unearned run in the fourth to keep them in the game at 5-2 before the Panthers had their big inning. Catcher Briley Napier doubled to the wall with one out and was replaced on the bases by Woodcock, who scored a two-out run on a throwing error by third-baseman Spencer Brandenburg.

The Cougars were scheduled to face John Hardin on Monday in another wood-bat tournament, this one in Bardstown.

By Don Brown, Local Sports
Reach Don at donbrown@k105.c0m

 

 

 

Braxton Hodges pitched well for the Cougars before
injuring himself on a rundown play.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Courtesy runner Caden Woodcock scored for the Cougars
following a double by pitcher Braxton Hodges in the first inning.