Pinckneyville rallied from an early 2-0 deficit to top SIRR Mississippi Division rival Sparta 6-2 Thursday in prep baseball action.
“After giving up two unearned runs in the first inning and having committed four errors while scoring no runs after two innings, we had the here we go again look on our faces,” said Pinckneyville coach Alan Engelhardt, “But Bryant Shute did a great job of keeping us in the game on the mound and came up with a big two-run double in the third after singles by Landon Chandler and Adam Barczewski.  After those first couple of innings, I thought we started to battle more than we have in the past few games.  Our bench gave us some really quality at-bats, with Drew Dudek and Christian Shopinski both coming in to homer and Justin Bumann and Marian Brammeier both reaching base as well.”
The Panthers rallied from the 2-0 first inning deficit by scoring two runs in the third, fourth and sixth innings.
Shute earned the win to even his record at 3-3 as he threw all seven innings allowing no earned runs on five hits while striking out four.
Chris Theobald took the loss for Sparta giving up six runs on eight hits while striking out three.
Dillion Blind led the Bulldog offense with two hits.
Pinckneyville improved to 11-10 overall and 5-4 in the conference with the win.