Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

MONTEVALLO – The Montevallo Bulldogs bounced back from an opening day loss to dominate in their home opener against the Verbena Devils, earning a 10-0 win on Tuesday, Feb. 20 at Montevallo High School.

After Ethan Juarez drew an opening walk, he advanced to third base on a pair of wild pitches. That set him up to score on the next pitch when Braden Douglas hit into a groundout to make the lead 1-0.

Two more Bulldogs reached on walks to set up Connor Shores for an RBI double to score another run and set up four straight scoring plays for Montevallo.

Bentley Howell hit a pop fly to center to earn an RBI single, and on the next batter, Jacob Whitson scored the fourth run of the inning after hitting into a groundout.

Tyre’ontae Sullens then hit an RBI single to end the scoring for the first inning with Montevallo leading 5-0.

The Bulldogs got out of the top of the second quickly with a one-two-three inning and got right back to work in the bottom of the frame.

Montevallo recovered from a leadoff strikeout to hit a pair of singles and then load up the bases on a hit by pitch.

While they popped out for the second out of the inning, an error by the Devils second baseman let Howell reach base and scored both Douglas and Keiston Ross, increasing the lead to 7-0.

Verbena had another costly error on the next pitch, this time on the first baseman which scored another pair of runs to put the Bulldogs up 9-0.

The Devils got out of the inning on the next batter and got the first two Montevallo batters of the third inning out. However, the Bulldogs capitalized from there.

Juarez drew a four-pitch walk, which led to Douglas reaching on a single and Ross getting hit by a pitch to load up the bases.

On the next batter, Charlie Adams drew a bases-loaded walk to allow the final run of the night to score, and Montevallo didn’t allow any more runs from there to earn the 10-0 win in five innings.

Ross pitched three no-hit innings and earned seven strikeouts against two walks for a dominant performance on the mound. Connor Shores closed out the game with a perfect inning where he struck out all three batters he faced.

The Bulldogs will return to action on Thursday, Feb. 22 in a road battle with Jemison at 6 p.m.