Greyhounds extend winning streak to 14

KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Fort Scott Community College's baseball team extended its winning streak to 14 games when it defeated Kansas City Kansas, 7-6, in a make-up game here Monday afternoon.

The game went back and forth. The Blue Devils led 3-0 after two innings and 5-3 after four.

Each team scored once in the sixth before the Greyhounds won it with three in the top of the seventh.

Eldon Little earned the win in relief as he got the Greyhounds out of a bit of trouble in the sixth. Garrett Woerman came on for the save, although he allowed two hits and a walk. But he also struck out two batters.

The Greyhounds had 13 hits: Three from Travis Cruz and two each by Andrew Minnich, Zach Caldwell, Brandt Barnes and Jason Houston.

Minnich had three runs batted in and belted a home run. Cullen Baxter and Trevor Geist also had home runs.

The Greyhounds have five conference games remaining in the season -- today's games at Hutchinson don't count toward the standings since that's an intra-division match-up. However, the 'Hounds have virtually clinched home-field advantage in the first round of the Region VI Tournament.

The top four teams in each division host best-of-three first-round series against one of the bottom four teams from the opposite division. As things look in the Western Division right now, those last four berths will go down to the wire as the bottom five teams each have four conference games to go and are within four games of each other.

Garden City and Dodge City -- tied for fifth -- each need to win only one more conference game to clinch a berth but either could still end up as the No. 8 seed. Butler, Pratt and Cloud County are also possible first-round opponents for the 'Hounds.

The Greyhounds (22-9 in the East, 32-16 overall) are currently in second place in the East. Although they're just 2 1/2 games behind Cowley, they have to finish ahead of them to win the division because the Tigers (25-7, 30-16) hold the tie-breaker by virtue of a sweep of the season series.

Johnson County (22-10, 30-15) is only a half-game behind the Greyhounds in third place and has one more conference game to play than Fort Scott does. Kansas City (19-11, 25-12 after sweeping Labette Tuesday) is in fourth place and has six conference games remaining. It's possible the Blue Devils may not be able to get all of them in before the regular season is scheduled to end.

Allen County (18-15, 25-20) is in fifth place and the last team in the division that's over .500 in conference play. The Red Devils have three games left, including a doubleheader at Fort Scott Saturday.

Fort Scott travels to Independence for a division doubleheader Thursday, then hosts Allen Saturday. A suspended game against Independence, which began at Lions Field on April 8 and rained out again last Friday, will be concluded Sunday at 4 p.m. in Independence.

Fort Scott......... 001 201 3 -- 7 13 1

Kansas City Kansas.... 211 101 0 -- 6 12 1

WP -- Little. LP -- Dow. Sv. -- Woerman.

HR -- Fort Scott: Minnich, Baxter, Geist; Kansas City: Kelly.