The Eastern Vikings will take on the Rancocas Valley Red Devils at 3:45 p.m. on Monday. Eastern's pitching crew has only allowed 3.6 runs per game this season, so Rancocas Valley's hitters will have their work cut out for them.
Eastern is coming in fresh off a high-stakes matchup with another one of New Jersey's top teams: Sterling, who was ranked 20th at the time (Eastern was ranked tenth). The Vikings walked away with a 7-4 win over the Silver Knights on Saturday.
Meanwhile, winning is always nice, but doing so behind a season-high score is even better (just ask Rancocas Valley). They came out on top against Clearview by a score of 14-10 on Friday. The high-flying hitting performance was a huge turnaround for the Red Devils considering their one-run performance the game before.
The team relied heavily on Jaylen Alvarez, who went a perfect 4-for-4 with one home run, four RBI, and two runs. Rancocas Valley is 2-1 when Alvarez posts two or more runs, but 5-6 otherwise. Another player making a difference was Liam Young, who got on base in four of his five plate appearances with three runs and one double.
Rancocas Valley was getting hits left and right and finished the game having posted a batting average of .429. That's the best batting average they've posted all season.
Rancocas Valley's victory ended a three-game drought on the road and puts them at 7-7. As for Eastern, their win bumped their record up to 12-1.
Eastern came out on top in a nail-biter against Rancocas Valley in their previous meeting on April 2nd, sneaking past 10-9. Will the Vikings repeat their success, or do the Red Devils have a new game plan this time around? We'll find out soon enough.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps