Drury Wins Showdown Against League Rival Mount Everett

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – Jake McAllister doubled twice and drove in a pair of runs Thursday to lead the Drury baseball team to a 7-4 win over Mount Everett at Joe Wolfe Field.

 

Carson Rylander and J.J. Prenguber combined to strike out eight for the Blue Devils, who extended their 9-0 start and completed their first trip through the Bi-County South double round robin with a 4-0 mark.

 

Rylander got the start and went 5 and a third innings on the mound to earn his third win. He also helped his cause with a pair of hits, including a double, in a seven-hit Drury attack.

 

“I love our balance, one through nine, in the way that we just attack a pitcher,” Drury coach Rob Jutras said. “We’re really disciplined. We don’t try to do too much. We try to hit the ball hard.

 

“And these guys trust each other so much. They’re not afraid to pass it down the line, because they fight for each other really hard.”

 

Mount Everett struck first on Thursday, scoring twice in the top of the first inning.

 

Brodie Kinna drew a leadoff walk, and Matt Lowe singled up the middle to get things started. Kinna eventually scored on an error, and Brady Carpenter drove in Lowe with an infield single.

 

Drury got back both runs in the bottom of the frame, when McAllister crushed a double to left to drive in Connor Hinkell and Preguber.

 

The Blue Devils took the lead in the bottom of the second with an unearned run off Lowe, who went three innings for the Eagles. Brayden Canales singled and came all the way around to score from first when Noah Arnold’s single was misplayed in the outfield.

 

Drury then tacked on four runs in the third to go ahead, 7-2.

 

McAllister doubled and scored in the rally, which saw Durant draw a bases-loaded walk and Canales and Rylander each drive in a run with a single.

 

Meanwhile, after a tough first inning, Rylander settled down and allowed no runs in the middle innings, at one point retiring five batters in a row.

 

But in the fifth, a walk and a hit-batter combined with a rising pitch count led Jutras to bring Prenguber to the mound.

 

“[Rylander] did a great job of adjusting [after the first] and working all his pitches, and he and [catcher Julian Feliciano] did a great job of managing their way through the lineup and through the game,” Jutras said.

 

“We felt like, if we were going to bring a new arm, we didn’t want to bring him in with the bases loaded. We wanted to give them a little something to play with. And we just felt like it was time, and that’s the way we went.”

 

Prenguber ended the inning with a comebacker to the mound to start a 1-6-3 double play.

 

In the seventh, the Eagles got things going with two out.

 

Kinna drew a leadoff walk but was swapped out for Lowe on a fielder’s choice, and Prenguber got the next batter to fly out to center field.

 

But Sean Warren singled to send Lowe to third, and a pitch that went to the backstop allowed Lowe to score and Warren to go to second. Carpenter then singled to bring Warren in and cut the margin to three runs.

 

“We had that one inning where we made a couple of costly errors, and you can’t give Drury extra outs, especially with Rylander pitching the way he was,” Mount Everett coach Dan Lanoue said. “But then, at the end, the guys gutted it out. We got base hits. We try to talk about a two-strike approach every time we come to bat and not doing too much, and that’s what they did.

 

“I thought we did well hitting. They just made more plays than us.”

 

Prenguber closed out the game with Carpenter on second base with the first strikeout of his outing.

 

As Drury nears the midway point of the season without a loss, Jutras knows there are plenty of challenges ahead, starting with Sunday afternoon in Great Barrington against Monument Mountain, on a day the Spartans will be honoring longtime coach Tom Hankey.

 

“It just gets tougher,” Jutras said. “Every time you see somebody, it’s gonna get tougher. There’s gonna be new challenges, and it’s just a dog fight every day.

 

“But we’re just living one day at a time, one pitch at a time, one inning at a time, and we just take them as they come. And then we’re just on to the next one.”

 

The next one for Mount Everett (6-3) is Friday at home against Housatonic.