Scott City baseball rallies to thwart upset

Colby, Kan. (westernkansasnews.com)–When you get to regionals, you can just forget what happened in the regular season meetings. That certainly held true for Scott City Thursday afternoon at Young Memorial Field against the Colby Eagles. Colby was trying to become the third eight-seed to win their regional opener in Class 3A, while the Beavers were looking for their first postseason win since 2018.

The Eagles would push Scott City to the edge, and even to extra innings, but the Beavers would take advantage of an error and walk off in the bottom of the eighth with a 5-4 win.

Scott City took the first lead of the day in the bottom of the second inning, when Lawson Bailey scored on a wild pitch to give the Beavers an early 1-0 lead. Colby would take advantage of three Beaver errors in the top of the the third with four runs on three hits and led 4-1. Three of the runs were scored on errors in the inning. After that, it was all Scott City on the scoreboard. Scott City would score a run in the next three innings, and started that run with an RBI groundout by Bailey that scored Harrison King. In the fourth, Ryan Cure would score on a balk to pull Scott City to within one, and in the bottom of the fifth with two outs, Blaine Culp scored on an errant throw back to third to tie the game at four. The game remained tied until the bottom of the eighth. With one out and the bases load with the infield playing in, a pop up by Brady Welker was dropped, as Culp would score from third to advance the Beavers to the semi-finals with a 5-4 win.

Easton Lorg picked up the win, going six innings of hitless ball with 11 strikeouts and one walk. JP Harris recoded four outs and had four strikeouts and one hit. Harrison King went 2/3-plus, giving up four runs, one earned on two hits. The Beavers had just two hits in the game, as Bailey had the lone RBI. For Colby, Shane Puckett started, and gave up two runs on no hits and had two strikeouts in two-plus innings. Brody McGreer gave up three runs, one earned on two hits with six strikeouts in 5 1/3 innings, and took the loss. Tanner Trussell had two of the teams three hits.

Scott City is now 15-4 overall and will face Lakin at 2 pm Friday in the semi-final round. The Broncs won a 1-0 game over Southwestern Heights in the first game of the day. Cimarron shutout Holcomb 2-0 and Hugoton outlasted Goodland 2-1 in 10 innings in the final two games on Thursday. The second semi final features Cimarron and Hugoton, with the winners advancing to the championship game at 6 pm.