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EDWARDSVILLE - It was a successful Tiger Classic Tournament for the host, Edwardsville Tigers.
The Tigers defeated the Lockport Porters in a thrilling 3-2 game on Friday last night. Early Saturday morning, the Tigers took care of the Highland Bulldogs 11-0 and finished off the day with a 5-2 victory over the Chatham (Glenwood) Titans on Saturday afternoon.
“Up and down the order we’re taking better at-bats, and that’s something we needed to have. As we get better at situational hitting and knowing what our little quirks our, hopefully, we’ll be even more productive,” Edwardsville coach Tim Funkhouser said. “Our pitchers were able to make adjustments during the games and control them.”
Catcher, Dalton Wallace also returned from the disabled list after suffering a concussion a week ago. Third basemen Cole Hampton returned to the lineup after being sidelined for two weeks due to a shoulder injury. He was 2-for-2 with an RBI and scored one run.
“[This is] getting our confidence up a lot. As the season goes we’re coming together as a team,” Hampton said. “In the beginning, we had some team problems, and our heads weren’t in the game most of the time, but now we’ve come around, and it’s working good.”
Drake Westcott did most of the damage at the plate for the Tigers going 2-for-3 with a home run and a double. This was the first game where the sophomore slugger batted in the leadoff spot, but given his on-base percentage, Funkhouser wanted to experiment how that could affect the rest of the lineup.
“As this year’s gone on I thought about moving [him to the leadoff spot] and tried it out today in both games. We’ll see where it goes from here,” Funkhouser said. “I think it’s something that gets him rolled through the lineup quicker and also sets us up a chance to have a guy on base early on. There [are] different guys within our order that impact other parts of the order that can reap some benefits.”
Edwardsville got on the board first in the second inning with an RBI sacrifice fly by Cole Hampton that scored Jack Cooper. Glenwood got the run back in the top of the third, but Westcott led off the next half inning with a home run that snuck over the right-field fence for his fourth of the season.
An inning later, Westcott was at it again.
With the bases loaded, he smoked a pitch that nearly went yard again, but landed on top of the right-field fence scoring all three runners giving Edwardsville a 5-1 lead.
That was a safe lead for Reid Hendrickson.
He would pitch five and two-thirds innings giving up two earned runs and one hit. Hendrickson boosts his record to 5-1.
Lucas Clayton came on in relief and recorded the last four outs.
Gavin Wahlbrink was 2-for-2 and collected both of Glenwood’s hits as well as driving in a run.
Kyle Werries pitched 3.1 innings allowing five runs, four earned and six hits. Noland Rooney worked the rest of the game giving up no runs, four hits and struck out two batters.
The Titans, one of the top teams in Central Illinois now move to 20-5.
Edwardsville picks up their 20th of the season and now enter the second-to-last week of the season with a 20-8 record. The Tigers have won eight of their last nine games.
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