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ABILENE -- Rusty Mask scattered nine hits over nine innings Thursday night to lead Montevallo to a 6-0 win over West Alabama in the first round of the NCAA Division II South Central Region tournament at Crutcher Scott Field on the campus of Abilene Christian University.
Montevallo (38-16) won the first NCAA post-season game in program history and moves into a winner's bracket game on Friday where it will face Gulf South Conference rival Southern Arkansas at 8 p.m. West Alabama, meanwhile, drops to 41-21 on the season and will face No. 1 seed Abilene Christian at 4 p.m. Friday. A loss for the Tigers would send them home, while a win would keep them alive in the double-elimination tournament.
Mask allowed just one walk and struck out six Tigers in his complete-game performance, improving to 8-5 on the season. He was the key contributor in helping Montevallo head coach Greg Goff pick up his 100th career victory.
The game was scoreless through the early innings before West Alabama ran into some trouble in the bottom of the third when the Falcons put runners at first and second with no outs. But pitcher Josh Allums got J.D. Pruitt to pop out to shortstop Clark Humber. With both runners wandering off their respective bases, Humber flipped to the second baseman (Dave Nanney) for the second out, and he fired on to first (Daniel Tankersley) for the inning-ending triple play.
Montevallo finally got on the board in the fourth, scoring the only run it would need on the night when Travis Fultz grounded into a double play that drove in Brantly Clay. The Falcons scored four more runs in the sixth inning on a pair of hits and one Tiger error, pushing their lead to 5-0.
Tankersley, Fultz and Daniel Furuto each had RBI hits in the inning for Montevallo, which added a run in the eighth and closed it out in the ninth.
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