Republic took advantage of multiple Monett errors to score eight runs in the first inning, cruising to a 10-0 non-conference win. Landin Sigman had two doubles to lead the offense, and A.J. Calhoon allowed just four hits in four innings to pick up the win.
“We really capitalized on some mistakes that they made, which was good to see,” says coach Curt Plotner. “They’ve got a solid team, and it just kind of snowballed on them. They made a couple mistakes and we just took advantage of it.”
Calhoon struck out seven and walked two, and Monett rarely threatened in his four innings of work.
“I think he threw well. He mixed it up a little bit more today than he has, and threw a lot of strikes,” Plotner says. “He could have kept going, but we were trying to get Jared (Hughes) a little bit of work there.”
Hughes came in to pitch one inning, striking out one, allowing two hits, but maintaining the shutout.
“I thought he did a good job. He’s got the kind of stuff that he could pitch at this level but we haven’t really had a spot where we could get his feet wet, and that was about as good an opportunity as we’ve had,” Plotner says of Hughes. “We’ve got a lot of games coming up, so we need all the arms we can get. So we just want to see how he responded, and he did a really nice job.”
Jaden Duvall scored three runs and drove in another. Nicholas Rose also had two runs scored for the Tigers, who improved to 7-9. They host Nixa Saturday at 10 a.m.
The JV Tigers beat Monett 2-0. It was their sixth win in a row, as they improved to 11-6.