Bentonville knocks off Springdale

BENTONVILLE -- April is starting to look very good for Bentonville High's baseball team. The Tigers claimed their fourth consecutive victory this month, despite spotting Springdale an early 2-0 lead, as they posted a 6-4 victory over the Red'Dogs during 7A-West Conference action Monday at the Tiger Athletic Complex. Bentonville (9-8, 5-2) manufactured nine hits off Springdale ace Andrew Roach (4-4) and took advantage of five Red'Dogs errors to stay within reach of Fayetteville and Van Buren in the league standings. This came after Springdale jumped out to an early 2-0 lead with three first-inning doubles off Jacob Williams. "We're just putting it all together," Bentonville coach Todd Abbott said. "It's everybody picking everybody up, and it's a total team effort. What you see is a product of everybody doing their part. "It's starting to come together. We're not quite there yet, but it looks good." Nathan Lyons and Tyler Johnson quickly erased Springdale's early lead with back-to-back RBI singles with one out in the first, then Johnson scored Bentonville's go-ahead run on Destyn Adkins' solid two-out single to right. The Tigers never trailed again, although Springdale (11-9, 3-4) had its share of runners in each inning against Williams, who pitched six innings. Bentonville did pick up some insurance in the fourth when Roach tried to pick off Cade Lastovica at third and the throw went into foul territory. Lastovica scored as Bryce Davis raced to third, then he scored on Kam'ron Mays-Hunt's second double into center field and made it 5-2. Those runs were key because Springdale cut it to 5-4 on Roach's two-run single with two out in the sixth. Williams retired the next batter to end the inning, then Ryan Kneeshaw retired the side in the seventh for the save. "We've made a lot of good offensive approaches," Springdale coach Scott Johnson said. "We're hitting everybody's number one, but we're making so many dadgum mistakes defensively. It's killed us. "At some time, we've got to make routine plays routine. If we make routine plays, we're in that game with a chance to win. We just made too may mistakes, and that's been our Achilles heel."

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Bentonville High School Athletics

BENTONVILLE KNOCKS OFF SPRINGDALE

HENRY APPLE

Arkansas Online | 4/11/2017

PHOTO CREDIT: Ben Goff