Central settles for lackluster home win

With the clock ticking toward the district playoffs next week, at least two coaches weren't particularly thrilled with their teams Thursday.

Central came away with a lackluster 4-2 SEMO Conference win over Scott City at Tiger Field in the regular-season finale for both.

The game was originally scheduled to be played at Scott City, but wet field conditions forced the relocation.

"I expected us to come out with a little more fire today," Central coach Steve Williams said of his Tigers (9-13, 4-4), who extended their winning streak to five games. "We weren't as enthusiastic as we had been the previous three or four games."

Scott City coach Mike Umfleet had similar thoughts.

"There wasn't a lot of life out there today," he said. "We kind of waited around all day to see if we were going to play and we've struggled all week with rainouts, but that's not an excuse. When you get a chance to play with the sun shining like this, you'd better be fired up or something's wrong."

Central scored three runs, two unearned, in the first inning.

Aaron Dohogne's RBI double drove home Seth Hudson -- who walked, stole second and third -- with the first run, before two consecutive infield errors by Scott City followed by Colin Schermann's RBI single put the Tigers up 3-0.

Scott City (5-9, 0-5) picked up an unearned run in the bottom of the first and another in the third inning on Trenton Estes' sacrifice fly to close the gap to 3-2.

Central builds its lead

In the fourth inning, Hudson singled, stole second, and advanced to third on a single by Chris Conrad, then scampered home on Dohogne's sacrifice fly to give the Tigers an insurance run.

Jordan Comer went 2-for-4 to pace Scott City's four-hit offense and Schermann had two of Central's seven safeties.

Central sophomore Jake Welch turned in a solid outing in relief of starter Mark Wittenborn. Welch (2-1) pitched four no-hit innings, allowed no runs and struck out seven.

"Jake's done a nice job for us all year," Williams said. "He's come on and become one of our top pitchers."

Jason Umfleet, the first of four Scott City pitchers, took the loss.

In addition, there were a couple of changes to Central's record book.

Hudson's three steals gave him a total of 25 and broke Central's single-season record of 23, while Williams moved into second place behind former Tiger coach Leon Brinkopf on the career win list.

llewis@semissourian.com

(573) 335-6611, extension 171