Nelsonville-York at Alexander

Here's my article for last night's Nelsonville-York at Alexander game. After winning the TVC last year Alexander has had a pretty bad season defending their title. Alexander won its first game of the season and I covered that game and including last night's loss they have lost seven games in a row. Anyway, here is the game recap. My next game is Thursday and it's Southern at Trimble.

Big inning leads Buckeyes past Spartans, 16-8

NICK BROCKMAN

Special to The Messenger

ALBANY - The Nelsonville-York Buckeye baseball team continued to improve upon last season's record by defeating the Alexander Spartans 16-8 on Monday night in a Tri-Valley Conference Ohio Division game.

The Buckeyes scored 10 runs in a decisive fourth inning to complete a season-sweep of the Spartans and earn the team's second conference win of the year."

It's been awhile since we've been able to sweep Alexander in a season," Nelsonville-York coach Rocky Smathers said.

Nelsonville-York defeated Alexander 6-5 on April 8, but quickly got ahead 5-0 on the Spartans in Monday night's game. Alexander, however, rebounded with six runs in the second and third inning to go ahead 6-5.

"We lost our concentration in the field a bit for a while, but then we recovered," Smathers said. "We played pretty well after that."

Right after Alexander scored five runs in the bottom of the third inning, Nelsonville-York responded with 10 runs in the top of the fourth inning. During the fourth inning 13 Buckeye batters stepped to the plate. Besides six hits, the Buckeyes took advantage of three errors and two walks in the inning.

Alexander coach Vaughn Grigsby said it is easy to point out his team's demise.

"It started on errors in the fourth (inning)," Grigsby said. "It started with a throw and it just snowballed then from there and we just had errors and errors and some runs."

Errors certainly cost the Spartans a victory, but eight Buckeye hitters contributed with hits to further the cause. Third baseman Kolton Thomas led the way offensively with a 4-for-5 day including four RBIs.

"Everybody is starting to come through and doing a good job," Smathers said. "Right now I think we're doing a lot of things well. They've been a lot more aggressive than anything."

After Nelsonville-York's big inning, Alexander scored once in bottom half of the fourth inning, and both teams added a single tally in the seventh inning for the ultimate 16-8 outcome.

Grigsby said despite suffering a tough loss there were some positives in the way his team played.

"I thought we hit the ball well," he said. "I thought Wes (Bolin) did throw the ball real well. He came in and did a real good job, but you have to play defense behind him. Unfortunately, we've had that one big inning all year where we haven't played defense."

While Alexander may be experiencing a down year, Grigsby also said he is pleased to see a team like Nelsonville-York improving.

"Hopefully they can continue to knock some people off," Grigsby said. "It's nice to see teams that have been down the past few years win some baseball games and unfortunately they're beating us."

Nels.-York 410 (10)00 1 - 16 12 3
Alexander 015 100 1 - 8 7 5

Start: 5:06 End: 7:43

NY (3-5, 2-3): pitchers Randy Walker, Nick Hunter (7) and catcher Connor Bunting
A (1-7, 1-5): pitchers Josh Moritz, Wes Bolin (2), Tyler Gillette (4), and catcher Michael Chapman

WP: Walker LP: Bolin