North Kansas City bounced back from a gut-punching 13-0 loss to Grain Valley on Monday to come from behind and defeat Excelsior Springs 8-5 on Tuesday. They improve their Northland Tournament record to 1-1 and pick up their tenth win on the season.
Dayton Horn overcame defensive gaffes in the first to limit the Tigers to only two hits after the inning and went 6 1/3 innings - his most impressive outing of the season.
Northtown's defense didn't get off the bus until the second inning, committing three errors in the first that led to three Excelsior Springs runs. But Horn took control in the second through sixth innings mowing down the Tigers in order three times in the game through his 110 pitch effort. In the third inning, NKC also managed to find their offense which was silenced on Monday and held to only two hits. The top of the order started the assault with a
Diamonds Cooper and
Nick Ward single, Cooper would score thanks to a
Bobby Grado double, then a
Brett Kamler two-RBI double tied the game at three. The Hornets took the lead in the fourth after
Kevin Pelico reached on an error, then scored on another Cooper single. Cooper would end the day 3-5 with three singles, and two runs scored.
Horn's effort kept the Tigers at bay while Northtown added on three more runs in the fifth led by an
Anian Nicolas double and a
Noah Devero RBI single. In the seventh, Horn was gassed and loaded the bases, but
Andrew Krueger came in for a two-batter save striking out the final batter on some high cheese.
The marathon week of baseball continues tomorrow with the Hornets heading to Fort Osage to take on the Indians, then Truman on Thursday to take on the Patriots. An opponent will be determined for Friday as will a location for the final seeded round of the tournament. This is only the fifth time in the past thirteen years that North Kansas City has reached double-digit wins in a season with eleven games left, there' a strong chance they'll hit their high water mark for wins over that time if they hit 14 eclipsing the 13-11-1 Hornets of 2009.
