Five wins in a row for Mt. Pleasant baseball

BY ANDY KRUTSINGER

Mt. Pleasant News

FT. MADISON ? The Mt. Pleasant baseball team has been on an absolute tear this week. The Panthers swept Keokuk on Tuesday, 11-1 (5) and 5-1. They won a non-conference game, 11-0 (5), on Wednesday and finished their perfect week with a sweep in Ft. Madison on Thursday, 10-3 and 4-1.

On Tuesday, a combination of good pitching and electric offense carried the Panthers to a 2-0 SEC start with their sweep of Keokuk.

Levi Parkevich started the first game for Mt. Pleasant and was nearly untouchable, throwing a full five innings and giving up just one run on four hits and two walks, while striking out two.

The Panthers scored runs in all five innings. They scored two in the first, one in the second and three in the third to jump out to a 6-0 lead early.

After the Chiefs? lone run in the top of the fourth, the Panthers scored one in the bottom of the fourth and earned the 10-run rule with a four-run fifth inning.

The Panther offense was led by Caleb Potts, who went 2-2 with four RBIs. Tyler Davis went 2-3 with two RBIs, and the trio of Zac Ebeling, Cale Christner and Dalton Shull had one RBI apiece.

The Panthers got out to a hot start in the first inning of game two. Keegan Rich started the game off with a triple and Pat Canby brought him in with an RBI single. Cooper Huckabone sent Canby to the plate with an RBI single of his own, and Caleb Potts scored Huckabone on a sacrifice fly to make it 3-0.

Canby got on base in the second inning and eventually came around to score on a wild pitch to stretch the lead to 4-0. Keokuk scored in the third but Canby made it 5-1 with a sacrifice fly scoring Jordan Magnani in the fourth.

Shull picked up the win for Mt. Pleasant. He pitched five and two-thirds innings and gave up one run on four hits and two walks, while striking out eight.

After an 11-0 drubbing of Eddyville-Blakesburg on Wednesday, the Panthers were back in SEC play with their first conference road doubleheader in Ft. Madison on Thursday.

The offense didn?t slow down for Mt. Pleasant in Ft. Madison. In the first game, Mt. Pleasant busted it open early with a seven-run first inning, which included a two-run base hit for Huckabone.

In the fourth, after a walk by Ebeling, Huckabone stepped to the plate and blasted a two-run homer for his third and fourth RBIs of the day to stretch the lead to 9-0.

Ft. Madison scored three runs in the fourth inning to cut the Panther lead to six runs, but Mt. Pleasant added an insurance run in the seventh on a run scored by Potts.

Colby Potts picked up the win, going six innings and giving up three runs on four hits and two walks, while striking out five.

The Panthers had another early rush in the second inning of game two. The Panthers took advantage of multiple Bloodhound errors to score four runs in the inning, one each by Keegan Rich, Canby, Ebeling and Parkevich.

The Mt. Pleasant offense wasn?t able to score any more runs after the second inning, but Christner dominated on the mound, throwing six innings and giving up just one run on seven hits and three walks, while striking out four.

Canby came in to pitch in the seventh inning and struck out the side to earn the save.

The Panthers are now 5-3 on the season and 4-0 in SEC play. They will ride their five-game winning streak into Muscatine on Saturday, June 4, for a road doubleheader, starting at 1 p.m.