TUMWATER — It wasn’t a traditional one-hitter for the Tumwater baseball team, but the Thunderbirds pulled away from the Black Hills Wolves 11-2 Thursday to take both games of a two-game set.
The T-Birds, led by stellar pitching from Luke Houk and Luke Overbay, took a combined no-hitter deep into the sixth inning. Their offense came to life with a five-run fifth inning and took advantage of seven Wolves errors to beat their rivals again, one night after a 23-1 shellacking at Tumwater.
“We’re all feeling good. We’re marked down a little bit on the rankings, but that gets us pumped up,” Overbay said after a two-hit, three-RBI performance along with six punchouts on the mound. “We want to go, and we want to show people that Tumwater…we can go.”
Overbay proved he was pumped up from his first at-bat, as he roped the first pitch a saw on a line drive to center field to score Will Bond and Peyton Davis before the Wolves recorded an out. He came around to score following multiple passed balls to give Tumwater a 3-0 start through one.
Black Hills didn’t need a base hit to tally its first run of the night. Lincoln Brannin walked on four pitches to lead off the first inning, and he scored from second on a Brody Rice groundball that forced an errant throw by third baseman Charlie Crawford.
Despite a shaky first inning, Black Hills starter Elija Simpson settled in against a potent T-Birds lineup, but his defense did him no favors. He walked Bond to start the third inning, and a grounder by Davis was mishandled by third baseman Joel Beldo. Overbay came up to the plate with bad intentions once again, mashing another line drive to left field this time to score Bond.
With runners on second and third, Simpson allowed no further damage in the third inning, and he held the T-Birds to one hit and no runs in the fourth. On the other side, Houk had retired his last eight batters faced and finished the day with six strikeouts and one walk. Blain Thomas’ fourth-inning walk snapped a streak of nine straight retired Wolves, but he couldn’t advance past second base.
Tumwater’s offense broke through in the fifth with five runs on four hits, a walk and an error. Cody Lambert drove in two on a groundball single to left field. The Wolves finally earned their first knock of the night on a Jesse Kieth RBI single in the sixth inning off of Overbay, but it was an overall quiet night at the plate for the home team which has yet to record an extra-base hit in four games this season.
Houk, Overbay and Braeden Konrad combined to allow one hit and strike out 15 batters in the 11-2 victory for Tumwater (5-4, 3-0 EvCo).
“I think they struggled a little bit location-wise but then they figured it out. Houk started struggling a little bit at the beginning but he was able to find it,” Tumwater coach Lyle Overbay said. “And my Luke has come a long way. He struggled throwing strikes consistently [last year]. He would be at 40% throwing strikes, maybe 50% at best, but now he’s at 60% or 65%. He has good stuff, but it doesn’t always matter if you have good stuff. He’s starting to get that confidence.”
In eight plate appearances against Black Hills this week, Luke Overbay logged five hits and drove in six runs. He was the anchor of an offense that put up 34 runs on the Wolves in two games.
“My main thing is all my guys cheer me up and get me going. They were doing the same thing yesterday and getting me pumped up,” Luke Overbay said. “We all work together. We’re all so close. We all hang out, and it builds us as teammates and makes us better.”
Tumwater will look to remain unbeaten in league play with a pair of contests against Aberdeen, first at home on Tuesday and then on the road on Wednesday. Black Hills (1-3, 1-2 EvCo) takes on W.F. West for a pair of games Tuesday and Wednesday, with the latter at home.
