Baseball Game Preview: Clay Center Tigers vs. Buhler Crusaders

The Clay Center Tigers will head out to challenge the Buhler Crusaders at 4:00 p.m. on Friday. Clay Center will be looking to extend their current six-game winning streak.

For whatever reason, it's the away team that's had the advantage when Clay Center and Wamego meet (two straight games heading into this one) and that held true again on Monday. The Tigers came out on top against the Red Raiders by a score of 7-2.

While Buhler didn't have the best season last year (they finished 8-10), it's starting to look like those struggles are a thing of the past. Their pitchers stepped up to hand El Dorado a 1-0 shutout on Monday. The one-run effort marked the Crusaders' lowest-scoring game of the season, but in the end it didn't matter.

Clay Center pushed their record up to 8-2 with the victory, which was their seventh straight on the road dating back to last season. Those road wins came thanks in part to their pitching effort, having only surrendered 2.0 runs on average over those games. As for Buhler, the victory made it two in a row for them and bumps their season record up to 7-3.

Clay Center took their win against Buhler in their previous meeting back in May of 2024 by a conclusive 10-0 score. The rematch might be a little tougher for the Tigers since the team won't have the home-field advantage this time around. We'll see if the change in venue makes a difference.