Prep baseball: Blythewood blanks River Bluff, 4-0

On the second day of the South Carolina Diamond Invitational at Blythewood, the host Bengals topped River Bluff 4-0.

“Our formula tonight was pitching and defense,” Blythewood coach Barry Mizzell said. “Justin (Greider) hadn’t pitched a lot for us and’s been pitching well lately. We gave him the start and we played pretty well defensively behind him and got a few big hits.”

River Bluff gave up two runs on two hits in the fifth inning, and was unable to recover.

The inning started with Todd Mattox walking. Batting second, Jordyn Adams flew deep to center field, and the Gators made a play on the ball but dropped it, setting up Andrew Crook with runners on second and third and no outs.

Mattox scored on a balk. Crook also walked, and Justin Lang-Spittler’s bunt was good for an RBI single.

“Tonight, I don’t think we handled adversity very well,” said River Bluff coach Mark Bonnette. “We had a couple things go against us there and I didn’t really like the way we reacted.

“You want to come out of this tournament knowing how to play in situations like this, because this is playoff-like atmosphere.”

With runners on the corners and one out, River Bluff changed pitchers, and the defense, led by Kolby Leitner, picked up consecutive outs to close the session.

The Gators went three up-three down in the bottom of the inning, and sent in a third pitcher, Parker Evans, for the sixth inning.

The Bengals loaded the bases with one hit in the inning, but would not get another run across.

The squads were scoreless after two innings, but, facing two outs and with the bases empty, Andrew Crook hit Max Lampl’s third pitch over the right field fence for a home run to open the scoring.

In the bottom of the inning, River Bluff catcher Treyce Bouknight singled deep to right field, and went to second on Ryan Reynolds’ sacrifice bunt.

Blythewood’s intentional walk of Brandon Tillmon brought Shawn Parsons up with runners on first and second and two outs. Parsons struck deep to center field, but the Bengals tagged a sliding courtesy runner Ryan Reynolds inches from the plate to escape the inning with their lead.

Then, in the top of the fourth, Barrett Grant second on throwing error, and two at-bats later, went home from second on another throwing error to push the lead to 2-0.

River Bluff got four hits to Blythewood’s five, and Blythewood made no errors.

This story was originally published April 1, 2015 at 11:36 PM with the headline "Prep baseball: Blythewood blanks River Bluff, 4-0."