Hixon's Brandon Carver pitches against Sequatchie County Thursday, April 7, 2016 at Sequatchie County High School.DUNLAP, Tenn. - With frontline pitchers shelved after Monday and Tuesday starts for district baseball games, the last thing Hixson coach Colton Green and Sequatchie County skipper Jacob Hatchel expected Thursday was a nip-and-tuck pitchers' duel.
The respective starters, Hixson's Brandon Carver and the Indians' Collin Hudson, provided the unexpected in a seven-inning game that went less than two hours from start to finish.
Carver improved to 5-0 as Hixson rallied for a 2-1 victory Thursday afternoon.
The starters had few strikeouts but allowed just four hits between them, and none of the three runs were earned. Hudson suffered his first loss in two starts but kept his 0.00 earned run average intact.
Carver stranded nine Indians, but his most masterful moment came in the sixth inning with two outs and the bases loaded. He ended the threat with a strikeout.
"We hit at'em balls all night - hit it hard - and then finally got something to fall in the bottom of the sixth," Green said. "Then in the bottom of the sixth Carver makes a heck of a pitch to get out of the inning."
Sequatchie manufactured its run in the bottom of the fifth. Garrett Higgenbottom eached on an error and advanced to third on a pair of wild pitches before Tucker Hall lined a single to left. Carver rebounded by getting a groundout and two pop-ups to avoid further damage.
Hixson rallied in the top of the sixth. Zan Tobias opened with a free pass and moved to second on Tanner Moylan's sacrifice. Garrett Layne reached on an error and Cabe Davis looped a two-out single to left, scoring Tobias and Layne.
Matthew Oxford pitched the final inning for Hixson - his first mound appearance this season - and picked up his team's first save of the season.
"It's a good win for sure," Green said. "We had only had one one-run game prior to this. It's good to win a one-run game. We needed that. You need games like that where nothing is falling in and you have to tough out some runs to get a win."
He had nothing but praise for Sequatchie, which has suffered nine straight losses after opening the season with three wins.
"They're a good ball team," the Wildcats coach said, praising the Indians' defense. "Their left fielder made a great diving catch. We hit the ball all night, but they made the plays."
Said Hatchel: "It's frustrating, but the guys responded well. The last two district games we got kicked, but there's no quit in these kids. They'll keep fighting. They understand that it's not about how we're playing right now but how we're playing the last two weeks going into the postseason.
"I'm not discouraged at all. We just have to break through and find ways to win."
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com or 423-886-4765. Follow him at Twitter.com/wardgossett.