Long ball powers Panthers in quarterfinals

MT. PLEASANT - A shaky first inning wasn't enough to derail the Mt. Pleasant baseball team on Friday night in their Substate quarterfinal game against Fort Madison. Anchored by two big home runs from Nik Coble and Clayton Lowery, the Panthers eliminated the Bloodhounds, 9-2.

Mt. Pleasant gave up two unearned runs in the top of the first inning, and trailed 2-0 until the bottom of the third inning, but the Panthers hammered out nine runs over their final four at bats.

'I think we were a little more tense than we needed to be,” said Coble, who started the game on the mound. 'We knew coming in that they were a really good team, and that we'd have a good fight on our hands, and that first inning kind of got to us a little bit.”

The Panthers cut the lead to 2-1 when Corbin Broeker scored on a Bloodhound throwing error that left two runners on base. Coble stepped up and delivered a three-run bomb over the right-center field fence to give the Panthers a 4-2 advantage.

In the bottom of the fourth, Jack Johnson scored to make it 5-2 on another Bloodhound error. The Panthers made Fort Madison pay again with an RBI single from Rylan Seberg, and Lowery stepped up to throw the knockout punch, a two-run blast to left on the first pitch thrown by Bloodhound reliever Jason Thurman.

'He had a weird pitch, and I was just seeing first fastball,” Lowery said. 'As soon as he threw it, I knew that it was going to be my best pitch to hit, so it was the one I took.”

Coble and Jaxon Hoyle combined to hold the Bloodhounds to just two unearned runs on five hits. Coble threw four full innings to earn the win, and finished the game with four strikeouts. Hoyle struck out two batters over three innings.

When Mt. Pleasant's bats heated up, they never stopped coming. Seberg finished 3-for-4 with a double and an RBI. Cobel was 2-for-3 with a double, a home run and three RBIs, and Lowery went 2-for-4 with a home run and three RBIs. Every batter in the Panther line up had at least one hit or at least one RBI.

'I don't know if we were tight, but that first inning was ugly for us,” said head coach Brent Broeker. 'I thought our kids did a great job once they got the bats going in the third.”

The Panthers are now 15-6 on the year, and they've got a mountain to climb in the Substate semifinals tonight (Monday). The Panthers will take No. 1 (3A) Davenport Assumption at Modern Woodmen Park in Davenport. The Knights will come in to the game 19-4.

'We need to get the bats early,” says Hoyle about tonight's matchup. 'Tonight, we had that rough start. We can't have that.”